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File: Hexpedition Atlas 1.png (303 KB, 1422x950)
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" I see you weren't entirely mistaken. "
" When am I ever? "
" I'll deign not to answer that. "
" Lighten up. "
" And you're certain this will actually work? "
--
>>
File: Trust me. Wink.png (300 KB, 1494x976)
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" Oh yeah. This is totally fool-proof. Trust me. We're going to be rich - honestly, you should be paying me for a chance to get in on this "

" Mh-hm. I find I prefer my contracts specified in advance and money flowing only one way "

" Where's your sense of adventure, commander? "

" Dead in a ditch with the 68th Light. You want adventurers, you hire Reikans. You wanted professionals, so, here we are. Are these things safe to handle "

" Well I have been very impressed by your people so far, so I think my clients money was very well spent "

" I can't help but notice you very much did not answer my question "

" Which one? "

" Don't try my patience. I could leave you here with an arrow through your chest and I would not sleep poorer for it "

" Eh, it only really hurts the first time. Just don't make skin-contact and your men should be fine. You brought gloves and shovels, as specified? "

" See my prior regarding professionalism. "

" Pleasure to be working with you. It really has been. "

" Mhm-hm. Well, be aware our agreement only covers acquisition and transportation. Once we get to the port, it's all yours and out of my hands "

" . . . yesssss. About that. "

" Do I sense the words 'contract extension' marching with unwarranted confidence towards this conversation? "

" Hey, can't we negotiate about, uh, service extensions? "

" Don't alter the deal on me. I pray you won't try to alter it further "

" I was just thinking: we get along so very well and you haven't shot me in the lung yet. Come on, Commander, you like working with me. It's this, or back to guarding noble estate and fighting flowers for princes with too much money. How many clients offer a chance to alter the world? "

" I'll take it under consideration. Now clear off. We'll be digging for hours and I need to supervise. "

" Excellent. I knew you'd come around! I'll be in my tent, writing a report. "

" I wasn't-- Mhm. She already left. Void take that woman. "

--
>>
Is it always this warm out here? The sun bakes the sand and you with it, until somewhere along the wandering paths you end up more sun-scarred sand than human being.

---

But it was not always like that. They tell tales this place used to be comforting, even, all shade and shadows and running rivers. Check nooks and crannies of old places, you'll forgotten buildings stick out of the sand. The bones of old peering out from the veil of time, and we the little scavengers among them. Wonder what one might find, if one goes a seeking in a place like this.

Maybe that's why you signed up for a Scavenger Company? They pay is good. The work is ... interesting. The people are rough sort, but neither the worst nor the best. And yes, a fair few of them spend more time fighting than they do guarding scholars or trading old detritus in trade-camps, but the difference between a scavenger and a mercenary is . . . slim at the best of times.

--

>Sign up, sign the contract, sign on.

Check the Company muster, then fill out your relevant papers here, below. We'll need a name to call you, and you'll have to tell us a little about what it is that you do.

#Name
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#--?
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!--?

--

Don't worry if you've never done something like this before - you'll learn quick. It's a kind of play by post multiplier narrative chess game, where the world tries to kill you.

There's a loosely coherent story, too, but you don't need to be too deep in the details to tag along.

>https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=art%3F

Oh, and dice a dice+xd6 in the options field - you'll want to know that to do the job you pick. There'll be some details later, but for now, just get settled in.
>>
Rolled 2, 3, 4 = 9 (3d6)

>>6108841
#Phridon
-
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
-
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
-
Uniform, DR2
Shortblade, Sharp
Spear, Reach 2, Impales, Throwable
Shield [18HP, 3DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets (actually, there's like 1 coinbit in there)
Whitebone Needles (Wards-12)
-
#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Iconotheurgy 12
#Spears 13
-
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Hopes and Fears 1
!Well Read

>Raise 6 Troopers equipped with spears (spearchads ww@?)
>Hire a Specialist who assists in Binding, Warding, and Abjuring.
>Keep the bad luck at bay (+3 coinbits). [Iconotheurgy 12]
>Buy some cool books (-2 coinbits).
>>
>>6108841

> Kit Selection: Thaumatheurgy Kit
> Weapons Training; Rope
> Whispered Secrets: Of Edges and insights
> Raise a banner: Spears
> Hire a specialist: Binding, Warding, Adjuring (x2)
> Receive your dues: Keep bad luck at bay (Iconotheurgy-12)
> Spend your bits: Hire a second specialist

#Icarus
=Metrics=
Vitality 12 // Stamina 12 // Focus 12
Action 9 // Speed 2
=Stats=
Will 10 // Health 10 // Grit 10
Sense 10 // React 9
Lethality 1d6 // Threshold 1d6
=Kit=
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Weaver's Whip
Whitebone needle
1 Bit
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
=Secrets=
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Iconotheurgy12
#Wards12
#Rope13
#Analysis12
=Traits=
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Edges and Insights 1
=Bannermen and Support=
(x6) Spears-11 troopers
(x2) Binding, Warding, Adjuring specialists
>>
Rolled 6, 6, 3 = 15 (3d6)

>Raise Blades
>Hire Logistics
>Enforce Discipline, Influence 11
Roight, you lot. Oi's Jove. Y'won't never be me, but it's a fun toim trying.
>Feed my squad a little better. -2 coinbits

#Jove
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9+1
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Wispcloak, Major to hide, halved move-do penalty
Halberd
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
A coinbit
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Gearwright 12
#Polearm 13
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Hopes and Fears
>>
You're a madman and I love it, CC
>>
Rolled 3, 3, 1 = 7 (3d6)

>>6108841
>Alchemineering Kit
>Powder Training
>Of Masks and Mettle
>6 Troopers, equipped with Muskets 11
>1 Specialist, who assists in Logistics and Procurement
>Honouring the timetable, harsh though it be (Tactics 11)
>Fall in love

Hurry up. I have to see her again.

#Edward
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
Morale +1
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Harquebus [4d6 Impact, Terror, Malfunction 16+, 3AP Reload, -1Acc per step, +1 Club in melee]
One Memento [Locket with her picture]
1 bit
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Alchemineering 12 [First Aid, Salt, Gas, Smoke, Fire, Oil, Salt, Acid, Stimulant, 1AP=1 point or huck 1d3 with major action]
#Muskets 13
#Small Unit Tactics 11
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Masks and Mettle: If you start adjacent to an ally, they add +1 to all skill tests and speed. Spend 1 AP on behalf of ally
>>
Rolled 5, 6, 6 = 17 (3d6)

>>6108841
>>6108841
Zivka

Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2

Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6

Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield & Axe
Ranging Kit
Tattercloak Quiver
Weather Cloak (Morale 1, Weather Resist 2)
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
1 Coinbit
More Pockets

#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Animalfriend 12
#Bows 12
#Axes 13

-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Hopes and Fears 1

> Rally six scarred Spearkin (and our dog)
> Beseech one Elder, of Refit, Repairs and Refinement
> Mind the beasts and men and unruly tribes folk. (Animals 12, Influence 11) The march is long, but the rewards will be worth it.

I had this terrible dream, of being cornered by an overwhelming foe….
>>
>>6108891
It's a sickness of the mind, softsoul. But that's okay. If you're along for the ride, perhaps we're both mad - and if so, what worth is it to be sane?
>>
Rolled 1, 3, 1 = 5 (3d6)

>>6108841
>Gain Trapping Kit
>Gain Powder Training
>Gain Of Hopes and Fears 1
>Raise a Banner of 6 Troopers equipped with Muskets
>Hire a Specialist who assists in Refit, Repairs and Refinement
>Run long duration perimeter patrols (vs Influence 11)
>Splurge on one of those fascinating books


#Scarlett
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Harquebus (4d6 Impact, Likely to Terrorize; Malfunctions 16+; Reload 3 AP; steps give -1 Accuracy; +1 Club in melee)
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Trapping Kit
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
1 Coinbit
A Fascinating Book
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Gearwright 12
#Muskets 13
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Hopes and Fears 1: Add Rank to resist terror; Major action to reroll Will for nearby ally; +1 to Influence and Thoughts
!Well Read
>>
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" Sir, we've got the last one stowed for now. My hands still itch "

" son did you touch the eerie singing crystal I done specifically told you not touch? "

" Uhhhh "

" Void take it, go find a water barrel - now - and you might'n not lose the hand. "

" Uhhhh ! "

" Don't just stand there, get moving. And get me Banner-Sergeant Wreckli while you're sprinting towards the camp, I need him to check something for me . . . "
>>
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" Like we thought? "

" Like we thought, Sir. No one's even heard of her down whisperway, and I don't see how some no name no bit swings around coins like she does. And, well . . ." the banner-sergeant gestures to the wagon, and the faintly humming depths of otherwise unremarkable sand, out here past the dunes

" Mh-hm. Odds this is all a setup? "

" Doesn't seem likely, Sir. Why bother, I means. If they wanted to bust us for smuggling or some Clause violation, it's a void-touched lotta work for a government spook to pay us for all our shovels first, get us out here, dig a bunch up and then throw us all in jail for doing what they done paid us to do "

" S'is a bit curious. My palms are itching. "

" Did you touch the-- "

" Not like that. Other itch. Something here just doesn't sit right with me. "

" You know, Sir, now it's all nicely in the wagon there are some people out there who wouldn't be too shy about paying good coin for something like this "

" Oh is that so, Banner-Sergeant? Please, keep talking. I do so like it when the insinuation of my officers is we should go back on our pledged word, backstab the client and violate our own creed "

" Sir, not like that. What I means is: If there's a bunch of outfits who pay good coin for this'n sorta thing, they'd also know-how know-why how to handle it, yeah? Be experts, that like. Alchemist, what have you "

" Not seeing your point so far "

" Well, Sir . . . We ain't "

" We ain't, at that "

" Right, sir. So how come we got hired, and not one of the outfits that knows their way about this kind of thing? "

" Ah, I see I once again underestimate your bear-trap like mind, Banner-Sergeant. Why don't we go ahead and double tonights sentry rota? And. . . tell the fourth and ninth to sleep in their armor. "

" Now you mention it, Sir, my palms are starting to itch too . . . "
>>
Rolled 4, 5, 4 = 13 (3d6)

#Luz
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Gauntlets
Thaumatergy Kit
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Books
1 Coinbit
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Iconotheurgy 12
#Close Quarters 13
#Analysis 12

-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Edges and Insight 1
!Well Read

>Keep bad luck at bay (Iconotheurgy 12)
>Raise a banner of 6 muskets
>Hire a 2nd Theurgic specialist to assist
>>
Rolled 6, 3, 4 = 13 (3d6)

>>6108860
A few warding gestures and some salt in the right place and all the worlds ills stay away a little longer. You feel cold at night, out here. Colder than you should. Those dreams keep coming back, the ones you can't remember, except for the taste of fear at the back of your throat and the snap-to-waking with a hammering heart in the morning.

Yesterday, someone almost died when they slipped and tripped over their own spear. Close call. The edge puncture through the collar of their uniform instead of their neck.
Some would call that bad luck.

You know better. It could have been so much worse.

>Accidented avoided
>+1 Reputation, note it as a Stat

>>6108864
Sure, if you shant test 3d6 as instructed, recruit, then Command will gladly roll those bones - but now we test against half skill [6]

>>6108887
They're a sour, sullen lot - the ones that aren't eager to please and new. It's an electic mix, all old eyes and new hands. You do your best and some of them show promise. Though "You", "do your best" and "Show promise" are terms that work hard in the stretching. It's really more a case of you desperately trying to keep up with the master-at-arms daily instructions and everyone else giving you the side-eye glance.

Run a few more laps, why don't you, Jove? All those extra rations you're feeding people are cutting into your stamina.

Look on the bright side: your example makes everyon else look like enduring heroes out of myth.

>-2 Stamina
>+2 Reputation, note it as a Stat

>>6108899
Getting there on time is half the challenge in modern management theory, and getting everyone else to roll out of bed, pack up and get moving is harder still. You win absolutely no favours with ANYONE for constantly reminding them all that they have a place to be. On the other hand, you shave three days off of the journey out which is food not eaten and water not wasted.

>-2 Reputation, note it as a stat
>Company stores are better off
>No one is out of water or food. Yet.

>>6108900
AH VOID--SHIT--HORSE--DUNG--SONOFAGOATHERDER--- WHY DO THE HORSES OF SUCH SHARP TEETH

>-3 Vitality, -3 Stamina, -3 Focus
>-1 Speed
>+2 Bandage alotment
>-2 Reputation, note it as a stat
>Gain: !I'll Walk, Thanks, as a trait.

Given the fact that all of horse-kind appears to have declared war on you for all eternity, you're going to have to get used to taking the slow route on your own feet.

You ignore any fatigue and stamina from having to foot it somewhere. Fancy.

>>6108927
Someone . . . is out there. You don't catch them - quite - but you catch sight of them, sharp spears sun-touched in the shimmering distance, small formations of fast moving troops. When you get there, they're gone. Camps tossed over by careful hands, no trash left to identify, and yet their presence unmistakable.

Someone is out there.

Crawling closer bit by bit

>Company alertness raised a little
>Recon-in-Force scouts briefed on imminent danger; all patrol dangers lessened.
>>
Rolled 4, 6, 3 = 13 (3d6)

>>6108950
>Duty List: Protocol Observance - Sprinkle salt around the camp's perimeter and over resting places - make sure every man's pillow is adorned with a light dusting of protective sodium. (Iconotheurgy 12)
> Personal: Buy a Wrackstone. (-1 Cointbit)
>>
Rolled 9, 8 = 17 (2d10)

>>6108962
About what I expected.
Now for the stone.
>>
Rolled 5, 6, 4, 6, 3, 2 = 26 (6d6)

>>6108965
Zivka

Vitality 9 Stamina 9 Focus 9
Action 9 Speed 1+1

Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9, Reputation -2
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6

Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield & Axe
Ranging Kit
Tattercloak Quiver
Weather Cloak (Morale 1, Weather Resist 2)
Good Boots
4 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
More Pockets

#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Animalfriend 12
#Bows 12
#Axes 13
#Filching 10

-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Hopes and Fears 1
!I’ll Walk, Thanks

AAAAAHH

> Write a letter to my Uthani kin. The search for a home continues, but at least we are paid.
Gain one Coinbit, spend my two on Boots. I’ll clearly need it.

> Take a tracking hound, and search for our missing supplies.
Animals 12
Logistics 10
>>
Rolled 1, 3, 6 = 10 (3d6)

>>6108841
> Kit Selection: Thaumatheurgy Kit
> Weapons Training; Rope
> Whispered Secrets: Of Masks and Mettle
> Raise a banner: Blades
> Hire a specialist: Triage, Surgery and medical matters
> Receive your dues: Enforcing discipline among the ranks (Small unit tactics-11)
> Spend your bits: Splurge on one of those fascinating books

#Icarus
=Metrics=
Vitality 12 // Stamina 12 // Focus 12
Action 9 // Speed 2
=Stats=
Will 10 // Health 10 // Grit 10
Sense 10 // React 9
Lethality 1d6 // Threshold 1d6
=Kit=
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Weaver's Whip
Whitebone needle
1 Bit
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
=Secrets=
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Iconotheurgy12
#Wards12
#Rope13
#Small Unit Tactics 11
=Traits=
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Masks and Mettle 1
!Well Read
=Bannermen and Support=
(x6) Blade-11 troopers
(x1) Young but well adjusted expert in Triage, Surgery and medical matters
>>
Rolled 1, 2, 4, 3, 2, 1 = 13 (6d6)

>>6108965
>Thaumaturgy 12, Warding 10?, Engage in Protocol Observance
>Insist that your papers are in error. I met a wave haired desert wanderer named Joe who taught me Mistbreathing. Keeps you from dying of dehydration in the desert.
>>
>>6108951
A single lonely cloud squirms across the vast skies, and just for a moment, it blots out the distant black spot that hovers there in front of the sun itself. Everyone breathes a little . . . easier.

Then Asog tangles in his own rope and almost breaks his own neck, and it only stops being a cavalcade of sprains and broken fingers because by the time he trips all over the Ashfingers and their tent repair work he doesn't have that many more fingers left to break. Straight to the medical tents with him and the four others.

Some might call that awful luck.
You . . . Oh, you know better.

>Accident avoided
>Specialist *not* dead, what a boon

>>6108864
Insisting it's good fortune to inscribe the right prayers in the sand outside the tents every morning and every night, you've instructed the troopers in the right careful moments and the symbols they draw have surely warded away the ill sting of bad fortune. Surely. Surely.

The recent spate of insomnia that the doctors are unable to do anything about is . . . unrelated mass psychological hysteria, from sun exposure. Surely. Surely

>Everyone is *tired*

>>6108979
Now there's a term you don't hear every day. Still wet behind the ears, huh? And that ain't even an insult - I wouldn't go insulting people like you. It's apt to be frightening. Might be something was off about your paperwork . . .

>>6108963
Oh no, softsoul. Why'd you have to go and find some of the pristine ones? Who even sold you this? Did you see his face? Did he even have one? Oh no

--

While the remaining Company musters and everyone else finds their bearings, we'll leave things off here for you to chatter amongst yourselves, carry out some duties and get your bearings. There'll be some more information later.
>>
>Eight Banners Raised, proceeding to Encampment.
--

It's been a while since you had any action. But, well, the thing about a Scavenger outfit is the days pass in a haze of work, duties, incidents and things-to-get-done.

Command has a plan - you mustered out weeks ago and have followed the maps inland and then further still until the maps started running out of border and you started running out of rations. There are villages here, insular, clannish folk, some more tribal nomads on perpetual move than metropol, some sun-baked clay-and-wood huts that might very well have been here since the world was formed.

Commands got a client, but they don't talk. You've seen her around - she keeps to herself, though at times she shows up from an unexpected angle and asks a few questions. Lately, she's had a nervous twitch to her eyes. Scouts the horizon more and more. Mutters to herself.

Word came down from the officers a few hours ago - extra sentries and more patrols. Someone to check over the water wagons. Someone to check over the spears. Someone to check over the . . . and on and on and on it goes. No one has exactly said anything that should lead you to believe you're apt to be murdered in cold blood. This isn't hostile country, after, just lonely. Those few scattered villages aren't going to rouse up into a mob and come a-calling with torches and spears.

But there are always rumours. This place is lonely. The sun is high during the daylight hours. The haze on the horizon intent. People disappear in this place. You've found their bones, sometimes. Gnawed on by . . . best not thought about.

--

While encamped, you can take one personal action and perform one Company-duty related activity.

Occassional follow-up prompts will be required - and you might get in over your head if you're not careful.

Expect Camp-Phase to last for roughly 48 hours or until everything is squared away.
>>
>>6108860
>>6108927
>>6108951
>>6108977
Right, you bookworms, perhaps you can riddle us this while we're whiling away the idle hours waiting for the Coldeyes to find out where in forsaken creation half our supply train went off to.

What manner of ill beast is described as a spiteful amalgamation of insectiod horror and imperial ambition?

What government rules that distant realm Vanadia, back over the other side of the Leviathan Sea?

What do you call the true name of the Sun?

If there are three powers in a room - an Emperor, a Magnate and a Priest - what do these grand Powers offer one soldier with a sword to defend from their peers?

What weighs more, memory or gold coin?

Hmhm?

Well you're such smart recruits, I'm sure you'll figure it out.

Ah, of course:

What's more important - knowing how to build a bridge or knowing how to bandage a wound?

>What a frightfully well-read Company
>Logistics difficulties reduced one step, because 'surely' the paperwork is all in order.
>>
Rolled 2, 5, 5, 4, 4, 3 = 23 (6d6)

>>6108989
>Write a letter home (to Kalcmiri)
>Gain Poetry 12, Well Mannered, and Weaving 12
>Perimeter Patrols (vs Influence 11, Well Mannered)
Perhaps the locals might have seen something.

#Scarlett
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Harquebus (4d6 Impact, Likely to Terrorize; Malfunctions 16+; Reload 3 AP; steps give -1 Accuracy; +1 Club in melee)
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Trapping Kit
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Gearwright 12
#Muskets 13
#Poetry 12
#Weaving 12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Hopes and Fears 1: Add Rank to resist terror; Major action to reroll Will for nearby ally; +1 to Influence and Thoughts
!Well Read
!Well Mannered
>>
>>6108999
also vs Logistics 10
>>
The Malichnid Princesses terrorize the Inky depths.

The Republic of Vandia still stands.

We deny the authority of the heretical Empyreal cultists, for I name the sun Friend who always returns.

The Government offers its Blades the armor of Authority (or Legitimacy if you prefer).

Gold weighs heavier in the hand, memories heavier on the soul. Memories are of greater value than the coldest coins.

Which is more important? Bandaging a wound. Bridges take time, and you can rely on the specialist to figure it out for you. Wounds are immediate. However, I'm more of a bridge builder myself.
>>
Rolled 1, 6, 1, 5, 4, 5, 2, 1, 3 = 28 (9d6)

>>6108841
>>6108998
>Alchemineering Kit
>Blades Training
>Of Malice and Mirth
>Blades Banner
>Specialist in Training and Discipline
>Enforce Discipline (rolling vs Blades 14)
>Spend Coinbits: Combat Lessons
>Personal Action: Write a letter home to Rikovol
>Duty: Disciplinary Action Review. Extra drill for the Ironwroughts! (rolling vs Blades 14 and Discipline ???)

#Wicklighter
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Alchemineering Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Longblade - +1 damage, Sharp
1 Coinbit
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 9
#Filching 10
#Alchemineering 12
#CQC 12
#Blades 14
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: If unengaged, add rank to first skill test. If engaged, add rank to all Reaction tests
!Rikovan: Can spend Focus as I would Stamina, and always regain at least 1 Focus when I Recover

Wicklighter holds those around him to the same rigorous standards of discipline that he holds himself to. Unfortunately, instead of coming off as a reasonable leader who wouldn't do anything he wouldn't ask of his subordinates, he usually just comes off as a bit of a freakazoid.

Seriously, what kind of psychopath's morning routine puts jogging five laps around the camp and twenty minutes of sword practice /before/ eating breakfast? There's something wrong with that man.
>>
Rolled 2, 1, 3 = 6 (3d6)

>>6108841
Smiling. He always smiles you know. That shit-eating grin strune across his face, whenever he's not wearing full armour that is.

Breacher Kit
>Powder Training
>!Of Steel Hearts
>Raise a Banner of Blades-11!
>Hire a Specialist in Refit, Repairs & Refinement!
>Keeping the gear stowed and the blades sharp (Armsmaking-10)
>Hire a professional (Logistics & Procurement)

#Ser Stalwart (Self-Proclaimed)
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 1
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 8
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
+Breacher Kit, 4DR
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [30 HP, 5 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets (1 Coinbits)
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Harquebus, 4d6 Impact, Malfunctions on 16+, 3AP to reload, Doubles as a +1 Club in melee
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Muskets-13
#Armsmaking-10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Armoured Advance 1: Intentionally body-slam targets upon entering their tile, deal 1d6+1 per straight-line movement prior
!Of Steel Hearts 1: If end unengaged, regain Vitality equal to rank. If end engaged, gain bonus damage reduction equal to rank
!Extra Rota
>>
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Rolled 2, 6, 5, 6, 1, 5 = 25 (6d6)

>>6108989
>Write home to mum in Reikan, and no peeking if you like your eyes (pick Carousing)
>Join the Scarred Spears looking for our supplies. (vs Influence 11 and Logistics 10)
>Must 'ave amnesia, they forgot that Oi's 'im.

Guards told me gate's closed. Greased the 'inges wivvem. Sold a man an 'eadache once. 'eisted a university by 'iding me rustic charm. Don't remember it all. Gets a bit fuzzy 'round the Crow... the...

... any'ow! 'sno one loik Jove but Jove!

>In another time, I did some high-stakes tinkering. You don't get away with stunts like mine without spare materials and an (occasionally blind) eye for workplace safety.
Jove, Striker 2 Sapper 2
RES 10
STA 6 SPD 3
React 2 Resist 1 Rebuff 1
Sense 1 Authority 2 Cunning 1
Brawn 3 Manipulate 1 Edge 2
Blades 2 Gearwright 1 Unarmed 1 Streetsmarts 2
!Deep Reserves
!Flourish
!Consummate Professional
!Patch Job
[R] Woodbreaker: 2H 1W 1Reach, Crits Cleave
[H] Rikovol Pressed Helmet, 2 Barrier, Fragile
[Tools] 3 bits, Boostgear 3/5 Fuel, 2+2+3 Boost
QuickreteTank Mod
Messer
Nugget of Palatine Armour, 3Mag Metallic-Terrene, 1Limit, 2Strain


#Jove
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 10 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10 Strength 11 Reputation 2
React 9+1
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Wispcloak, Major to hide, halved move-do penalty
Halberd
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
A coinbit
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Gearwright 12
#Polearm 13
#Carousing 14
-Traits
!Armored 1
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Hopes and Fears
>>
Rolled 6, 6, 3, 3, 1, 5 = 24 (6d6)

>>6109041
More smiling.

>Write a letter home (Reikan)!
>While I'm doing my own personal paperwork lets get to work fixing some other things such say... Arms Procurement! (Armsmaking-10, Refit&Repairs-10, Fresheyed Archers)

#Ser Stalwart (Self-Proclaimed)
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 1
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 8
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
+Breacher Kit, 4DR
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [30 HP, 5 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets (1 Coinbits)
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Harquebus, 4d6 Impact, Malfunctions on 16+, 3AP to reload, Doubles as a +1 Club in melee
-Secrets
#Strength 11
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Muskets-13
#Armsmaking-10
#Carousing-14
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Armoured Advance 1: Intentionally body-slam targets upon entering their tile, deal 1d6+1 per straight-line movement prior
!Of Steel Hearts 1: If end unengaged, regain Vitality equal to rank. If end engaged, gain bonus damage reduction equal to rank
!Extra Rota
!Armoured 1
>>
>>6108977
Finally, someone who knows the right end of a sharp word and can get some of these mudfeet to fall in. Good work, Caedo - you might even an officer's stripes if you keep this up.

>Some of the slackers work a little harder
>Gain +1 Reputation, note it as a stat
>Lose 2 Vitality, from temporary bruises acquired busting up a gambling round gone bad
>Gain 1 Stamina
>Gain 1 Focus

>>6109021
By all the stars in the endless skies someone on this field of must and dust seems to know the bleeding end of a sharp and the blunt end of a hammer. Are you sure you're in the right outfit, here, Wicklighter? Might'n be your menace-making murderhands could command a sizable premium in more lethal operations. Well, I won't commit on Rikovian traditions. You people travel a lot, yeah? I can respect it. No, I won't be joining you for morning laps, but maybe there's something in this Path some of these people can learn from.

>Some of the troopers learn a thing or two
>The Master-At-Arms, a quiet, taciturn and slim looking Vanadian with a hat askew on her head invites you around for a few extra practices matches some of the odder evenings. You almost don't get hit.
>Gain +1 Speed OR +1 Reaction
>Unfortunately, you don't get much sleep because the tryhards keep coming at you to prove they are, in fact, that hard. -2 Stamina.

>>6109041
Stalwart Bulwark, is it? Your parents must just about have loved you something fierce. Good eye for packing the right crates. Who'd have thunk we still had so many spare uniforms stuffed in the water barrels? Who'd have thunk we were so low on water?

>Gain an additional water skin
>Find a very nice uniform, +5 Temp Vitality
>Some of the troopers patch their gear
>>
>Ten Banners Raised
--

Look at this sweat-drenched, bone-tired, dust-coasted formation and tell me it don't just fill your heart with pride. Don't have a lot of things you can count on out here in the Aikan Wastes, but an ally or eight never makes anyone look askance.

Good work getting everyone marched out here on time, Edwards.

Our supply situation is growing a little problematic. Commander usually handles it. Spent nine months in a Vanadian border-fort once, down to rats and boot leather hear him talk about it, and swore that would not ever happen again. Thing is, our people are strung across hundreds of miles of mildly twisted sand, steppe and curling dust-eaten road-way aways. Even if this isn't unfriendly country and the locals are almost polite to your face it's hard to imagine that half our missing wagons haven't encountered people with loose ideals about the sancticity of private property.

Let's see what those perimeter patrols are reporting . . .
>>
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Feels like you've been walking for days which is always the trick around here. The landscape changes by subtle degrees. It's all sand and endless shimmering horizons and you don't notice the hypnotic lull. Then you cross a dune and bypass a rocky cliff that sticks out like a broken tooth and then - well - then you suddenly enter a place of almost shade and green things. Mushy sand from some wetness in the deep earth. Bricks, long stained by the wind, but orange clay still almost faintly homely. This place is impossible to see at distance, hidden by some quirk of sand dunes and the undulations of the landscape. You practically fell right into it.

It's not an oasis, not by a long shot, so the few of you that hoped for more water can groan and complain and pretend it helps.

Still - the sand somewhat sticks to your boots here. It's possible someone dug a well, because there must be some underground flow or such-like. And where there were once wells there were once people. Might still be some.

No tracks from wagons here, and you're sort of off the beaten path. Ideally the supply train would be staggered out behind you with villages you'd had already passed and haggled with. Once the quartermaster assistants arrive, the villagers would have had time to prepare the supplies that the Commander and his outriders had already haggled for. It's a system that has worked on countless other operations, it keeps you lean and moving and precludes endless slow-downs from overload on the road.

But it does have this one peculiar problem that precludes its usage by most standardized military formations. It's the thought that lurks now in the back of your minds.

If the Commander and his outriders have passed through a village ahead of the supply train, and you, on foot and marching along to some distant goal, pass by later once again and then eventually some underworked supply clerk finally rolls up with four mules and an empty wagon . . .

. . . well.

From a certain point of perspective, that would mean someone got a good headcount of your entire outfit, knew the proper fighters were on ahead a-ways and could keep a watch for any returning. It's a system that lends itself far too readily to ambushes.

Which is why one only ever does it in places were that sort of thing doesn't happen.

And --

You can't muse much more because the hounds go ballistic at some distant scent. But they don't bound to the chase. They bare their hackles and teeth and the growls are low and rumbling.

It's not people - that's a different signal (two short barks means intruders). But they're unhappy.

And that distant sun-baked bit of random clay architecture in the middle of absolute nowhere is to blame.

Might be you should take a look? It'd be a good place to leave a message, if some of the supply people have passed by this way or gotten in trouble.

Might be you should turn right around and get out of here. Just something in the air.
>>
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>>6108963
Where did you find such a thing, friend? Why would you hold on to it? Do you not know the difference a slim bit of jewellery will eventually make to your life, your fate, your very sense of self?

I would fear what you become, eight score years hence, but never to worry: Most never live so long.

These are the kinds of things you find the Wastes, and put back down, and forget you ever found. They pay good, grand sums for these in distant ports and distant shores. They raise men above men, they say. The great equalisers of station and stature.

Out here, cracked and broken wrackstones are ten to the hand, each one as useless as an empty water-skin and as enticing as a gut wound.

But sometimes . . . Oh, sometimes you find the ones are broken yet, by the wind and the world. Hold it in your hands. Feel your bones bend different.
>>
>>6109021
They don't like it. But they do like that the payment for profit is sweat and toil - it has a certain fanciful karmatic weight about it. And we can't exactly be punishing people for showing inititiave, anyway - half the Company would be punished all the time.

An outfit like ours don't hold much with the whip or the lash. Too easy to slip away in the night, and too easy to stab your tormentor. No one signs up for this kind of work with the expectation that they'll be beat about by their peers - but two more hours a day of grueling extra work still brings the message home that some things are not entirely acceptable.

Everyone watching takes note. Weigh the odds and ends. Some turn it into a sport - tagging along. Not much else to do here, on these endless lingering evenings, than beat about with swords and footwork.

>Well, they're been disciplined - but they're a hardscrabble lot with excellent stamina, so the one that ends up worse for wear leading the exercise is Wicklighter ! Impressive, the way some people just put on armour and keep going.
>>
Rolled 3, 6, 2, 2, 5, 4, 2, 6, 2, 6, 4, 1, 5, 1, 5, 5, 2, 3 = 64 (18d6)

>>6109212
>"Hi...Dad...doing great...hmm, no...doing good...making lots of...friends...and some...money...Love...Phridon. Ok, that should do." Write letter to senpai in Pyther.
>Duty List: Protocol Observance. [Iconotheurgy 12, Warding 10]

Can we tag along with one of the formations in addition to the above actions? If so,

>Join the Windswept Blades on their diplomatic forays. [Stamina 12, Blades 14 (me), Blades 12 (troops), and Influence 11]

#Phridon
-
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
-
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
Reputation 1
-
Uniform, DR2
Shortblade, Sharp
Longblade, +1dmg, Sharp
Shield [18HP, 3DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets (actually, there's like 1 coinbit in there)
Whitebone Needles (Wards-12)
-
#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Iconotheurgy 12
#Blades 14
#Religious Ritual 11
-
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Hopes and Fears 1
!Well Read
>>
>>6109214
If Scarlett agrees, I’m happy to investigate.
>>
Rolled 5, 2, 2 = 9 (3d6)

>>6109045
While your past record is impressive and all, simply telling everyone what a charmed and concussed life you used to lead was doesn't much tell us what you're trying to draw from the experience.

What you should consider is the skillset you're insisting you have or whatever equipment you might have brought with you - we can make some allowances.

>>6108979
Unfortunately, you don't seem to have any papers that prove anyone wrong, so surely, you cannot have what you claim to have.

>>6109008
Well, three out of six ain't bad for the average academic.
--
>>
>>6108998
>What manner of ill beast is described as a spiteful amalgamation of insectiod horror and imperial ambition?
Malichnid? But it could also be a colorful way of describing the Wasponi.
>What government rules that distant realm Vanadia, back over the other side of the Leviathan Sea?
The Vanadian Republic. They're a union of city-states or somesuch and all like...democracy?
>What do you call the true name of the Sun?
The Empyreal.
>If there are three powers in a room - an Emperor, a Magnate and a Priest - what do these grand Powers offer one soldier with a sword to defend from their peers?
Glory, coin, and divine favor, respectively.
>What weighs more, memory or gold coin?
Memories command greater weight, being fragments of ones soul.
>What's more important - knowing how to build a bridge or knowing how to bandage a wound?
Bridge-building is a grander undertaking. I would assign it greater import.

I swear, I actually read all those books and don't just have them sitting in an untouched stack so I can affect the appearance of a true intellectual. Honest.
>>
>>6109220
#Icarus
=Metrics=
Vitality 12 // Stamina 12 // Focus 12
Action 9 // Speed 2
=Stats=
Will 10 // Health 10 // Grit 10
Sense 10 // React 9
Lethality 1d6 // Threshold 1d6
=Kit=
-Equipment-
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Weaver's Whip
-Gear-
(x1) Bit
(x1) Fully Inert Blackstone // (x1) Whitebone needle
(x2) Bandages // (x2) Torches // (x2) Bags of Salt
=Secrets=
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Iconotheurgy12
#Wards12
#Rope13
#Analysis12
=Traits=
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Edges and Insights 1
=Bannermen and Support=
(x6) Spears-11 troopers
(x2) Binding, Warding, Adjuring specialists

> Take the Fully Inert Blackstone.
Oh Command.
I have such sights to show you.

(Don't fret. I'll have this truly daunting mountain of recordkeeping streamlined down into something sleek and unobtrusive before the violence begins in earnest.)
>>
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>>6109252
'at's easy. Can't be a bombshell w'out Oi's put together roight, see? Same w'an actual bomb, an' stunts, an' me gear. Oi's the very image o' a Consummate Perfessional. Almost wot the 'ighbrows call Workplace Safety, only it's in the name o' may'em, mischief an' menace.
>>
Rolled 5, 2, 3, 3, 5, 4 = 22 (6d6)

>>6109212
You may call me Edward, sir. There is no S in the name.
>Write a letter home, to distant, rainy, Illios
My dearest Anne,
I miss the sea. It is so weird to...
>Arms Procurement. There are villages nearby. Surely I can convince these good, kind, backwards people to part with some supplies in a mutually beneficial application of the principles upon the wealth of nations is built. The invisible hand always finds a way. Attempt to bolster my Muskets skill while I'm at it.(Influence 10+2 Fast Talk)

#Edward
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
Morale +1
–Stat
Reputation -2
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Harquebus [4d6 Impact, Terror, Malfunction 16+, 3AP Reload, -1Acc per step, +1 Club in melee]
One Memento [Locket with her picture]
1 bit
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
+2 Fast Talk
#Alchemineering 12 [First Aid, Salt, Gas, Smoke, Fire, Oil, Salt, Acid, Stimulant, 1AP=1 point or huck 1d3 with major action]
#Muskets 13
#Small Unit Tactics 11
#Boating 12
#Sea Navigation 12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Masks and Mettle: If you start adjacent to an ally, they add +1 to all skill tests and speed. Spend 1 AP on behalf of ally
>>
>>6109214
>>6109245
I do agree, please investigate
>>
Rolled 5, 3, 4 = 12 (3d6)

>>6108841
Command, could I spend my spare bit on that Gleamsprite's Flutter that Icarus found? If not, roll me up a new set please!

>Mobility Kit
>Gauntlets
>Of Malice and Mirth 1
>Raise 6x Bows
>Hire a logistics specialist
>Keep gear stowed, blades sharp, Gearwright 12
>Gamble gamble gamble, -2bits +lucky token, +debt
>Buy that Gleamsprite?

#Facsimile
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Boostkit, Fuel 4/4, Speed 4
Wispcloak, +1 reaction, major to hide in terrain/cover, move and do at half
Lucky Token
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Empty Pockets
-Secrets
#Gearwright 12
#Filching 10
#Close Quarters 13
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: Add rank to first skill test if starting unengaged, add rank to reaction if ending engaged
!Sizable Gambling Debt
>>
>>6109275
Surely, wound care is more important. Only one trade saves lives!
>>
>>6109327
A single treated wound may save a life, but a built bridge leads to the flourishing of hundreds, perhaps thousands.
>>
>>6109327
You don't think bridges save lives? Have you ever lived on the other side of a river from the only clinic or garrison in a hundred miles?
>>
>>6109329
I don't understand what the problem is. Do you not have boats in your home?
>>
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Rolled 3, 6, 3 = 12 (3d6)

>>6109214
>>6109245
>>6109304
The hounds growl and paw the sand, but the troopers spread out under the shade of the trees and check the perimeter. The wind has died down. The air is . . . Thick is the wrong word, but somehow weighted. Six more steps towards the old crumbing walls and it feels like sixty. Scarlett crest a slight rise first and ducks under a old leaning tree. Catches their breath.

Spots a boot, half buried in the sand. Mass produced leather hardheel, type seven, surplus supply from some Reikan force on the Continent. Same boots issued to new recruits.

Catches Zhivka's eye. Points. No one wants to be first but someone eventually has to be. It's not the only pair of boots half buried in the sand, nor, alas, is it only boots out here . . .

>Sense 10, Hounds +2
>>
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Recent. Looks like they died tired - water skins are empty and they're short a lot of equipment. Might have tossed it running.

The sands eventually reveal four missing supply clerks. But no supplies.

One of the troopers - a forensic type - offers some choice commentary on the nature of the recent demise. Everyone's a little shaken. Might just be their way of compartmentalising. You don't get a lot of out and out murder out this way, usually. Yeah, battles, sometimes. Company on Company type thing, or bandits, or roamers, or marauders or . . . other things. But this poor probably died begging not to. Two of them weren't even facing outwards.

But the area's been cleaned, proper. Would have missed all this if not for the wind and sheer luck. For people dead by arrow wounds, there's no arrows here - nor on them. Means who-ever did this came in close to check their work and scavenge the bits. Curious note they didn't touch the water skins, then. Or the boots. Why pluck out your own arrows but leave all the other gear? Or did these people sprout needle holes and then the arrows just faded away after like a mirage? Sun-mad talk, that.

Well, that's put a chill down everyones spine.

If this lot of supply clerks died here they'd have spent some time running - which means, mh, yeah, eyeball the sunward position and then there's a village down a ways. An hour, maybe, on foot. They'd know what happened here, maybe? We passed through a week ago, going out. Seemed quiet types.

That, or its back to the Company to report - but if we've got people holed up in a village, waiting rescue, they'd probably appreciate the speed of delivery on their safekeeping.

>..?
>Better check the village
>Better report to the Company
>Better search this area proper, we might be missing something

Sands in the hour glass, falling, falling, falling away. . .
>>
>>6109323
It's not yours to buy and it wasn't offered to you, recruit - don't go desiring the acroutements of your fellows, that's avarice. These things have a way of finding who they're meant to find, more's the pity.

>>6109303
That's what the Commander swears by too, though he's not Illosi. Grease the wheels, he calls it.

This village back a ways - what four hours or so? - was pretty quiet coming out and might be more quiet now you're coming back from long patrol. But the people there usually keep a thing or two hidden away for a rainy day. They had a large, half abandoned the Commander's been renting as a supply depot.

The trick of it is that sort of thing's bound to draw in hagglers from other villages - if you beat it back there aways it'll be a few hours on foot, but you can call it a patrol and maybe you'll find a market in the making?

>>6109297
A demolitionist is it, by Jove? Figures that skull of yours is thick enough to use a a battering ram. The trick of such consumate professionalism would be something rather akin to this:

!Consumate Professional 1: Sense against an environmental danger and you get additional Def and DR, shareable with 1 AP as you point it out to others.

>>6109294
Thanks. We hate it.

>>6109275
Now five out of six is real academic work and no mistake there, book mind. You've got the making of a Free College mail-in diploma and no mistake!

Alas, there isn't any Wasponi around here - and Malichnids, blessedly are more the types to be in aggregate further inland.

But imagine that. We've got ourselves a thinker.

>+1 Thoughts to you
>+1 Paperwork Admin to the Company.

>>6109224
"Diplomatic Foray", frankly, is Company-Speak for wandering to small outlying homesteads six hours by foot or more, politely knocking on the door of clannish smallholders and nomad tent camps who do not like outsiders, and then offering to mend fences and round up sheep. Commander Isenfrii swears by it, calls it a hearths and minding campaign, but it's the worst sort of warfare: the kind that risks splinters, angry parents thinking you're here to seduce away their children and having to field a barrage of curiousity from people who do so very rarely get visitors.

It's a long treck. But after spending two days chasing down lost ungulates the tent-leader of one of these mirage like camps only glares at you when you show up. Which must be somehow better than the spitting. Asks if you can bless the tents. The winds been howling hot lately.

You do so.

He ain't convinced that's a proper rite.

You part amicable ways.

>+1 Coinbit
>+1 Reputation
>+1 Stamina
>-1 Grit - what a long haul.
>>
>>6109336
>Better check the village
>>
Rolled 7, 4 = 11 (2d10)

>>6109340
Who, me? Coveting my neighbor's possessions? I wouldn't dream of it - to filch such a precious, pretty, nightmare rock... inconceivable!

Those grapes were probably sour anyways.

>Buy a different wrackstone
>>
>>6109336
> Back Scarlett. Investigate the village.
>>
>>6108962
>>6108979
Luz, Icarus and Phridon sketch out a sigil on the sand with sticks and lines of salt and good natured haggling. Professionals don't catch religion. You shouldn't really believe that invoking these different signs grant amensty from transgressions celestial and pardons for crimes profane.

But . . . you shouldn't really assume it doesn't. It's the Wastes. Ill fortune and worse luck stick to your like bad breath and morning hair, the gaps between intent and action grow vaster, the shadows are too cold, the sun is too warm and sometimes, when you blink, the brief flashes of light behind your eyelids show distant galaxies.

There are . . . signs to be made. Assurances to offer. Little rituals, practiced and rote, that we perform to buy a measure of consideration from things that have no compasion. To the smallholders and villages of this place, these sort of things are so mundane part of life that they do not even enter theology. You wipe your shoes before going inside, you sleep at night, you eat your porridge with salt and you bleed four drops - and never more - on the north facing wall of your hut every six days and then the Wind doesn't steal your fondest memories.

Surviving out here long enough is part practice and part forensic theology, figuring out what parts of old scattered miracles still hold sway and what part you can ignore.

For now, a small dispute must be settled. There are wards and signs to make.

But do we perform the usual checks, unsure they work? Or do we step up our efforts? Ill luck has been prowling lately. The wind is hungry. And recent reports put riders on the horizon, hostile or not so.

Of course the eternal issue is that one cannot barter for free. View it from the other end: Is this what we are going to waste water and salt and time on? Old superstition and half remembered prayers from a language no one even speaks any more?

>...?

>Better try the Sunward Prayer - this is a wasteland desert steppe, and the sun does rule supreme here. Nothing to advanced, but mind your vowels. Simple, easy, we know this by rote.

>We might want to dig into the water rations and offer some to the hungry ground and the restless Animant King, and all the hierarchies that they command. It'll cost water - and rations - and inevitable someone is going to break a leg, but on the other hand, it might be safer at the moment to pay the trespas toll for setting foot on the earth

>Maybe the wind - what's the one, Ashon? Ashi? Ashir? Ashoniti? - should scatter some ash and smoke across the wide horizon. We'll have to light a few pyres and burn something precious, and that might not be the best of ideas. Still, no one's ever gotten in trouble for minding the wind.

>Maybe we simply dip the good luck charms in the water barrels and distribute them around, tell everyone to whisper a prayer to whatever they find appropriate? We don't have time for rites and rituals right now - it's time to *move*
>>
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>>6109345
You're treating things that should make you consider caution with a lackadaiscal attitude that is going to get you smeared over multiple walls or cause you to experience a sharp, sudden stop to your vital processes.

If you let the Wastes and the Wrack too deep into your soul, recruit, you are never going home again.
>>
>>6109349
> Hm, well. Of course, there are *other*, less popular Icons waiting out there in the long quiet.
> Appealing to Probos to rig the scales of fortune in out favor may allow us to sidestep many minor hardships.
> Begging for the willful guidance of the King of Kings Shaunt may reinforce the troop's discipline or imbue the officers with heightened authority.
> By presenting a gracious invitation to Tr'drak, perhaps we may be blessed to march in the shade - briefly shrouded from the Eye and the notice of others.
>>
>>6108998

At first glance, perhaps a spitescorp but at the point where we are you could be describing any kind of insectoid and be right

They call themselves Republicains yet we know that Prime Minister Ghellis probably named himself despot for life. Whatever all this nonsense means it hardly makes it democratic. Should've just stayed a monarchy

The Empyreal

Worldly power, material wealth and spiritual fulfillment.

Whichever is in more quanttity at the moment. Both come and go anyway.

These answers are mostly wrong anyway

>>6109210
We'll see

>>6109212
>Personal activity: write a letter home to Pyther (Pytherii yes sir) "Dear Professor Magister..." +1 Rope Skill, Religious Ritual 11


#Caedo
=Metrics=
Vitality 10/12 // Stamina 13 // Focus 13
Action 9 // Speed 2
=Stats=
Will 10 // Health 10 // Grit 10
Sense 10 // React 9
Reputation 1
Lethality 1d6 // Threshold 1d6
=Kit=
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Weaver's Whip
Whitebone needle
1 Bit
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
=Secrets=
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Iconotheurgy12
#Wards12
#Rope14
#Small Unit Tactics 11
#Religious Ritual 11
=Traits=
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Masks and Mettle 1
!Well Read
=Bannermen and Support=
(x6) Blade-11 troopers
(x1) Young but well adjusted expert in Triage, Surgery and medical matters
>>
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>>6109347
>>6109341
Better check the village - no good leaving someone in trouble.

It's a quant place, sticking to the windsafe side of a large rock eruption like a barnacle on a ship. Though tell the truth, it's probably only Edward around here who even knows what a proper barnacle is meant to be.

Few kids running around when you went trough here last but an hour later and road-sore, you find nothing. Scarlett and the spearmen are flagging, though Zivka manages recently well, all things considered.

>Scarlett Fatigued!
>Spearmen Fatigued!
>Zivka's Fine Walking, Thanks.

Usually, places like this, they have a . . . eh let's not use the word watch or guard, no, that's too formal, too structured, but they have youths with clubs hanging about coincidentally at the roads leading in a ways, the places where strangers meet family, that little subtle perimeter between "out there" and "in here with us". They're not meant to frighten anyone off, just keep an eye on things. Long way to the nearest legion post out here, and all praise be to the Pytherii polity, they probably have enough troubles lately of their own that their overwarked Dispatched Legion troopers don't need to come a-checking for local trouble all that often.

Point being someone should have been here to wave a sullen looking hand at you and beg a few scraps of water and share some news.

There's no one.

Ringposts for animals are empty, though the through is gone, curiously enough. That same tension in the air back a ways. The scraghounds have their heckles raised.

The village proper is still down a fair bit, but there's a building owed by some well-to-do who-even-knows out here, set aside for itself. Quick peek through the windows and a rap on the doors gets nothing, place is deserted.

The wind howls.

This . . . this might not be as normal as it should be. Still, these people keep a bevy of holidays and holy days and other things. Pass-me-down things to do and not do when the mood strikes. Two months ago half the towns we passed through were deserted, it was all kinds of eerie, and then as it happens it turns out that was because everyone had trekked to one of the larger villages for a come-every-century feast and weren't we the fools for coming into the market square guns out swords up armour on and frightening the children half way through their snacks. Egg on our face, tell you what.

Maybe we don't go repeating accidents of improper decorum - Scarlett's WELL MANNERED enough that if we send her in first, she'll charm anyone we come across and we can avoid an incident.

'Course wise then we'll have to send her in first. Maybe tag along a few troopers, for company.

Otherwise maybe there's some other way to figure out what in the Void is going on around here?

Frankly, recruits, I'm out of ideas. This was always going to be a four Banner-leader job, but you're half of the hoped for strength and way out on your lonesomes . . .

>... ???
>>
>>6109373
Those answers are mostly right - and Spitescorps to the score is what you find prowling for your meat.

And stands to reason, eh? Coinclink and memory are both money, but they only weigh you down when you have 'em in excess

See, Caedo? Make an officer of you yet. You're the thinking sort.

>+1 Authority. That's a stat.
>>
>>6109340
Market in the making, perfect. It'll be full of opportunities for someone with entrepreneurial spirit. Do we have anything surplus to trade? No big deal if not, I am confident in my ability to haggle my way up a series of trades, the process is just easier and faster with some seed money.
>>
>>6109363
Strange patterns to think - strange friends to know by name. We might, at that - but if we go paying homage to Distant Icons we might draw in more than we expect.

Still. Could be done. Modify a larger seance, brush up on your barely remembered Aikani pronoucations, crack a spear and break a shield and bow to the Monarch Who Wills or the Endless Friend.

You're presumably . . . the specialist
>>
>>6109394
The troopers' potfill a larger round of seeding if you hadn't been so damn sure insistent on time to march - it's done you no few favours in the friends department.

Though for all that they grouch at least a few of them can figure out the ideal, and aren't we all looking for that one lucky chance to score it big? Beats rinsing Fasci for more coin. Swear they're good for it but we know that's a lie.

>You don't have the rep to really round out a collective or get the quartermasters on your side, but enough pass around gets you one-half Grand Coin, which rates about one-fifty coinbits the standard issue so don't you go be spending that on yourself now, those blade-bound are real into this "receipt" thing.
>>
>>6109387
With no signs of conflict or death around, I'm of the mind that those who lived here left voluntarily. How late in the day are we at now? If we've got time, I say we take a break in the shade by the trees or against the building to catch our breath. Afterwards (or if we don't have that much time, skip to) I can go on ahead with a few handpicked tag-alongs who are by my estimation more socially conscious. On the way, I'll give them some pointers for how not to offend these villagers should we happen upon an innocent festival or what have you.
>>
>>6109401
Sensible and mannered. Sun's dipping, so you'll have to overnight village wise or somewhere rough, it's hours ways back to Base Camp. This is the Descending Glory hours, the long slow orange flicker in the skies, the gradual lengthening of shadows.

Been out here all day. Maybe the villagers - once you find them - won't mind sharing some of their water or supplies? Could be we could use some, starting to build up a sun-headache.

Still no problem calling a rest for a few hours. Good place for it, really. Someone's bound to show eventually.
>>
>>6109406
Can we expect to reach the village proper after an hour's rest before it gets dark? If not, I say we head straight there, otherwise we can rest here before going on with my initial plan.
>>
>>6109396
> Icarus puts his support behind contacting Probos. The theurge is a little foggy on the details of the procedures for invoking this icon, but he's pretty sure he can play things by ear based off half-remembered rumors and a few wild guess-timations..
"Why yes, the shattering of dice with hammers and painting of playing cards is an absolutely integral part of the appeasement ritual.
What's that?
No-no, of course you wouldn't of heard of it before, its a foreign method with a markedly higher success rate.
Where does it originate... uh, its an old Kalcmiri tradition.
Yes, you know how they are with their symbolism and purple prose and such.
You say you grew up in Kalcmiri, never heard of such a thing?
Oh, well, no see that makes sense because of... its, ah the thing, you know...
Look, just trust me, I'm a professional. Now put on this crow mask."
>>
>>6109358
Command, I WILL experience that sharp, sudden stop to my vital processes that you so elegantly describe IF those debt collectors catch me unprepared. Don't judge me, for my bones are brittle and my pockets empty.

Anyways, I have a feeling this Legion Grain will be cheaper than settling my sizable gambling debt - or maybe I'm just paying a different sort of cost.

>Take Legion Grain, gain Wrackstone 11

#Facsimile
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Boostkit, Fuel 4/4, Speed 4
Wispcloak, +1 reaction, major to hide in terrain/cover, move and do at half
Lucky Token
Legion Grain, 1AP to deform or major to shape something
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Empty Pockets
-Secrets
#Gearwright 12
#Filching 10
#Close Quarters 13
#Wrackstone 11
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: Add rank to first skill test if starting unengaged, add rank to reaction if ending engaged
!Sizable Gambling Debt
>>
>>6109409
An hour? Recruit - it's .... ten minutes down the road, and that's if you're slow.
>>
>>6109444
Good to know, guess we'll take an hour's rest before investigating the village. If it's that close, can we see any movement over there, or is it obstructed by terrain?
>>
>>6109349
>Better try the Sunward Prayer - this is a wasteland desert steppe, and the sun does rule supreme here. Nothing to advanced, but mind your vowels. Simple, easy, we know this by rote.
Can't go wrong with the good ol Empyreal, if you ask me.

THESUNTHESUNTHESUNTHESUNTHESUN
>>
Rolled 3, 3, 3 = 9 (3d6)

>>6108841
>>6109387
#Labrys
-Metrics-
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat-
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit-
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Trapping Kit
Bow, Impales
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets-
#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Gearwright 12
#Bows 13
#--?
-Traits-
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Hopes and Fears 1
-Bannermen and Specialists-
(6) Pikemen (Pikes 11)
(2) A Duo charged with Triage, Surgery, and Medical

>Duty: Keeping Gear stowed and Blades sharp (Gearwright 12)
>Spending: Hire a professional (-2 Coinbits)

"With friendly hands and faces, backed with steel and threats, even a dungeon can be a safe haven."
>>
>>6109399
One half grand coin will be more than enough. I was half of a mind to start trading upwards from my 1 bit anyway. Let us demonstrate the art of the deal, shall we?
>>
Finally, a proper lot of modern marching troopers around here. Say what you will about the indefeatigable pike, you get enough of your friends pointing that lot in the right direction and you might straight take on the world itself.

>>6109452
Unfortunately we're direly running out of equipment and supplies, and you'll have noticed we're short on arrows. Sorry, shooter, you'll have to make do with a shortbow and a few crooked arrows.

No thanks to having lost the supply train somewhere back down the road, we're starting to run out of feathers for caps and caps and left handed wrenches. And biscuits, which might actually matter !

--

>Duty listings, final call, finall, anyone not currently attending a Duty Listing can do so now, final call. . .
>>
Rolled 5, 6, 3, 5, 5, 3 = 27 (6d6)

>>6109473
#Labrys
-Metrics-
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat-
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit-
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Trapping Kit
Shortbow
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets-
#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Gearwright 12
#Bows 13
#Poetry 12
#Glass-Blowing 12
-Traits-
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Hopes and Fears 1
!Extra Rota
!Well-Mannered
-Bannermen and Specialists-
(6) Pikemen (Pikes 11)
(2) A Duo charged with Triage, Surgery, and Medical

>Personal Action: Write a letter home to Kalcmiri (Gain Glass-Blowing 12)
>Duty Listing: Arms Procurement (Gearwright 12, Refit 8+2, Bows 13)

"Oh dear. We can't deal with some of our most important troops, and me, not having biscuits, can we?"
>>
Rolled 3, 4, 4, 2, 5, 6 = 24 (6d6)

>>6109473
Yes, I know I'm not a company certified smith - no, honestly, I'll just sort of bend it back together! Look, I'll grab just some stout wood from that tree and - what? Of course it's safe.

>Duty Listing: Arms Procurement, target Stern Ravens, smooth some kinks out of their gear with Legion Grain (Wrackstone 11, Refit 10?)
>>
>>6109388
Right
>+1 Authority added to sheet
>>
>>6109473
>Join Perimeter Patrols
>>
>>6109520
You might want to roll, otherwise you risk getting tested against [6]
>>
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Rolled 4, 6, 5 = 15 (3d6)

>>6109520
Fair enough, Jove, so that'll be a how-the-wind-goes sort of patrol, eh?

--

Muster Order

. . .
>>
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While Jove wanders off to get hopelessly lost and Fascimile breaks some more expensive military equipment and puts our pike formation out of order pending a dire lack of pikes and functional armor, we have some business to attend to. And let's not disturb the Iconotheurgic Specialists. They're doing something with dice and hammers. They must probably know what that's about.

The long recon patrols should have been back by now, and we know from Scarlett's report from earlier that there are . . . people out here, with weapons and no easy desire to meet us. We're not aware of any other outfits out this way. Our client guaranteed - promised, even - that she'd be the only one with an atlas showing the way to where we found what we found and what the Commander is currently keeping under tight wraps. If you've been peeking under the tarps, you best keep it quiet.

So, other than waste our time and destroy our gear, we do need to do something about this situation before we find ourselves on the bad of a surprise.

Commander Isenfri is putting the camp on medium alarm, and we're sending out a small contigent - in force - to do a long sweep in a wide area around the camp. If anything is out there, there'll be enough of you to frighten them off and if not, you won't be so sorely needed we'll be run over without you. The rest of the Outfit will hold down the fort and get us packed up for moving, secured away, such-like.

There is also the matter of our missing supply train and lack of reporting from our perimeter patrols. Odds are they're either stuck in a bad rut on the road or something else is going on.

Here's what we need from you, since that is - apparently - your job around here. . .
>>
Rolled 4, 1, 1, 2, 6, 6 = 20 (6d6)

vs Logi 12 and Influence 11
>>
Rolled 2, 1, 3 = 6 (3d6)

```>>6108841
>Mobility Kit, blades, Of Cold Winds, Raise Blades, Hire a refit, repairs, refinement specialist
>From Rikovol +1 CQC
"To his lordship Sword Saint Sato..."
>Keeping the gear stowed and blades sharp (gearwright-12)
>Get a better pair of boots

#Crushfists
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 3
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Boostkit, Fuel 4/4, Speed 4
Wispcloak, +1 reaction, major to hide in terrain/cover, move and do at half
Better Pair of Boots
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Gearwright 12
#Closequarters 14 (Rikovol)
#Pathfinding 10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina and 1 focus (Rikovol)
!Of Cold Winds 1: Unengaged +speed. Engaged +dmg```
>>
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>>6109527
14 minutes too late, demolitionist. You're off on your own, wandering in the desert, no backup, no map, no canteen, no nothin'

Them's the breaks.
--
Marching Orders

So, here's the map - no big wrackstorm lately, so ain't nothing shifted too much and the readings look somewhat stable so everything should be mostly where you hope it is.
What you are going to do is this:

You are going to pick a destination and make your way there. That's a test of your most applicable skill and our company Logitics.

You are going to nominate someone to take point, either yourself, brave and bold, or any of the troopers who - well - fair bit less likely to fall into an ambush. You might want someone with good SPEED? Keen SENSES?

You are going to suggest a rough marching order for the banners. Maybe you want all the guns up front, or you want all the blades close to hand.

It looks like this:

>Navigate to Rallypoint Midnight Blue (Navigate 12, Logistics 12, I roll 6d6)
>I think the Reckless Ashfingers can take point, they're twitchy
>I'd like us to be defensive - can we get the spears on the perimeters and the archers bundled near the middle of the column?

--

Once you all organise your maps, hash it and the wind as its say, we'll see where we end up. Yeah, this means you might all submit plans and who knows which one takes precedence. It might also mean you hear some good words from some clever soul and decide to go with that, which ought to be a treat.

--

Recruits Edward, Scarlett, Zhivka and Jove needn't worry about THIS part, because Scarlett and Zhivka are off on their lonesome who even knows where, Edward took off with half our pay-chest towards that village an hour and Jove is completely bloody lost.

Scarlett and Zhivka can finish up their plans for the village.
Edward might want to make a Navigation test.
Jove . . . You should pray.
Why in name of all the high heavens didn't you at least pick a map before you done a-wandering straight off in a random direction?

Maybe if you have enough FOCUS you'll find your way back around - you should probably test that, and anything else that comes to mind.
>>
>>6109536
You hear that "WAIT FOR ME" on the winds? Yeah, me too - run fast.
>>
>>6109537
Does Sea navigation apply? A desert is a sea of sand, if one looks at it a certain way.
>>
>>6109543
Thats because there was an error sorry about that.

>Mobility Kit, GAUNTLETS, Of Cold Winds, Raise Blades, Hire a refit, repairs, refinement specialist
>From Rikovol +1 CQC
"To his lordship Sword Saint Sato..."
>Keeping the gear stowed and blades sharp (gearwright-12)
>Get a better pair of boots

#Crushfists
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 3
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Boostkit, Fuel 4/4, Speed 4
Wispcloak, +1 reaction, major to hide in terrain/cover, move and do at half
Better Pair of Boots
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Gearwright 12
#Closequarters 14 (Rikovol)
#Pathfinding 10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina and 1 focus (Rikovol)
!Of Cold Winds 1: Unengaged +speed. Engaged +dmg```
>>
>>6109544
If one looks at it a certain way, you riding off with two mules and eight months pay in a saddle bag is the score a life-time, so maybe we should be careful about what sort of perspectives we're using.

Sea Navigation works at sea, Queensman. Get yourself an admiral's hat or stand on a boat and it'll tell you exactly what you ought to know. Unfortunately semi-solid sandy ground ain't the sea, so you're down to luck, hope and your Senses if you ain't got else.

Maybe pick a destination, likewise, though it's apt to be the village.
>>
>>6109547
Good man. We can find it in our magnimonious heart to forgive such a thing and I'll even deign to remember your Rikovian cognonem and treat it with the respect it no doubt implies I should, given your chosen style of combat.
>>
>>6109543
Command, I believe my Reputation should be +2, given >>6108961 and >>6109340
>>
>>6109551
Seeing as you're so very on the ball, the first mark of a studious well read type, consider it done and corrected. All the troopers appreciate a pedant.

Well, no. But they do appreciate someone who pays attention.
>>
Rolled 3, 3, 6 = 12 (3d6)

>>6109548
Score of a lifetime? That's outright thievery, sir, a grave accusation and I shall not have it! There are far better ways to make money without resorting to banditry.

Besides, how could I carry it back to Illios by myself?

I am heading to the village, yes. The explorer's blood that runs in my veins and my Senses 10 will see me safely there and back in time for tea.
>>
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>>6109252
>Joe gave me this chit. Said it went with a blade, but that the blade got sold to Red Market types in exchange for spider food. Lent me a little spider too. Some sort of webspinner. She gets all over the place though, hard to know where she's at. Free spirited that one. And takes to the desert like she was born to it.
>>
>>6109576
Ah, one of those people, eh. This is why sensible outfits have background checks, but of course if we were sensible we wouldn't be marching with the Ice Smile himself.

Well, Luz, congratulations - you can count yourself cursed; add Mistbreath 12 as a Secret.

What does it do? How do you use it? That's a secret too - but we'll let you in on it a little later; there's a whole manual of arms that might show up.

You might want to grab along that ritual knife as well, it'll . . . come in handy.

>Glistening Knife, +1, Sharp, Storage (=Secret)
>>
Rolled 5, 3, 2 = 10 (3d6)

>>6108841

#Rion
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
BoostKit: Fuel 4/4 Speed 4
WispCloak: +1 Reaction
Bits of kibble: Animals like more
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Coinbits: 1
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Gearwright 12
#Close Quarters 13
#Pathfinding 10
#--?
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Cold Winds 1
!--?

>Mobility Kit
>Gauntlets
>Raise: Troops with Bows
>Hire: Training and Discipline
>Buy: Kibble feed
>Dues: Perform perimeter patrol (Pathfinding 10)
>Duty list: Perimeter patrol (Pathfinding 10) Let's go and find those supplies
>Insist on error: For i clearly an moth school Martial artist Whom has seen the raw potential of the world.
>>
Sea Sultans are also little imperial creatures of the deep. The principalities of Spiderdom are numerous.
>>
Rolled 2, 4, 6 = 12 (3d6)

>>6109583
Duty list: Perimeter patrol (Pathfinding 10) Let's go and find those supplies

Now with actual dice
>>
>>6109583
This is why sensible outfits have background checks. When the Client said she'd bring along some associates, we should have asked more questions.

Be nice to the Rikovians. I don't want none of your intercine show-boating under my watch.

>+1 Sense, +1 React
>-1 Grit
>!The Flow: When you Defend, you perform multiple Step-Dodges. When you attack, targets get -1 skill.
>>
Rolled 6, 1, 6 = 13 (3d6)

>>6109583
>>6109590
One more time.
>>
Rolled 4, 6, 4, 4, 3, 3, 4, 1, 5 = 34 (9d6)

>>6109537
Tell no one your next move, not even y'self.

>Focus 12, orient self
>Thoughts 10, find way to friends
>Sense 10, notice odd things off the beaten path
>>
Rolled 2, 6, 1, 4, 5, 5 = 23 (6d6)

>>6109537
Seeing as we are undergoing a water shortage, propose going to the Oasis first to refill our water. I'm sure it will take something to purify out the Wrack so discuss bringing such things along. Then march west behind the wall to protect us from wrackstorms coming off the fields and make our way to the digsite. Have scouts check out Shadetree along the way. Let the pathfinders take point.
>Navigate to the Oasis (Mistbreath 12, Logistics 12)
>Nomiate that person calling themselves Crunchfist to take point
>Blades at the outside, less mobile troops such as the muskets and 'pikes' in the middle. Screen with any pathfinders or adventurous mobile types.

>>6109349
>Assist in asking Propos for assistance. We've been having a spat of bad luck, so why rely on luck. Sing a cheerful gambler's ditty about how you win some and you lose some and really it's all about knowing when to stand, fold, and run while helping the others rig cards and dice and chanting a silent canticle in my heart about eliminating doubt and finding comfort in certainty. While I'm at it, use my ritual knife to shave my 1 coin so it always lands on heads. Collect the scraps for melting into a new coin. Ask the others if they want me to help them with their loose change.
>>
>>Probos
>>
>>6109537
I support Scarlett’s heroic sacrifice, command, and while she handles that I’ll see if the dogs can scent anything useful amongst the derelict- being the only entity not fatigued.
>>
Rolled 4, 4, 2, 1, 2, 6 = 19 (6d6)

>>6109543
>>6109628
Suppose I should also roll for what I just said

3d6 vs 12 (Animals)
3d6 vs 10 (Filching)
>>
>>6109628
I would recommend against scrounging through someone's property. It puts a damper on relations, which are rather important when we have low supplies and may be facing a guerilla style opponent.
>>
>>6109637
In fact, I will do everything in my power to stop this short of fighting him. This kind of banditry is the opposite of what we need right now.
>>
Rolled 1, 2, 2, 6, 1, 5 = 17 (6d6)

>>6109210
>-2 Stamina. Oh well, I've gone with less.
>+1 React

#Wicklighter
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 10 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Alchemineering Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Longblade - +1 damage, Sharp
1 Coinbit
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 9
#Filching 10
#Alchemineering 12
#CQC 12
#Blades 14
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: If unengaged, add rank to first skill test. If engaged, add rank to all Reaction tests
!Rikovan: Can spend Focus as I would Stamina, and always regain at least 1 Focus when I Recover

>>6109537
>Navigate to Rally Point Shadetree (Thoughts 9, Logistics 12, 6d6, I don't think I should really be the one navigating). If these are prearranged rally points, there's a decent chance of finding our people at one of them.
>Say, Command, !Of Malice and Mirth 1 gives me a +1 to my first skill test when unengaged, yes? And I'm technically unengaged right now, right? I don't suppose Thoughts 10 is on the cards, is it?
>Let's have the Sharp Sharps take point. Seems like a good idea to have somebody careful but not overly twitchy going into danger first.
>Spears on the perimeter, swords and muskets near them, and bows nested in the middle.
>>
>>6109592
I'd never act on grudges too good for that besides i punch they punch. If they start something it's on them
>>
Rolled 2, 4, 5 = 11 (3d6)

>>6108841
Name
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 8
#Influence 10
#CQC 15
#Alchemineering 12
#Pathfinding 10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Cold Winds 1
!Hot-blooded


>Take the Alchemineering Kit, Gauntlets, Of Cold Winds 1, take remedial combat lessons and end up a little concussed (-1 Thoughts), hire a medical specialist (for my concussion)
>Write home to Rikovia, tell the SCHOOL OF THE UNDEFEATED OF RIKOVIA that I am doing fine and honing my fists.
>Do a job: Go patrol! That too can count as training! (CQC 15)
>>
You hear that on the winds? It's the sound of a sprinting last-gasp recruit running to catch up with the sweep patrol.

Fall, in Palm. Maybe you'll get along with Crushfists, you both being so handsy.

--

Luz briefly considers using a Secret he was specifically instructed to wait to be told how he gets use out off to lead a gaggle of people straight off into nowhere and consequently contrive to get everyone lost.

Wicklighter whispers a blade-prayer and takes over the management of this march order because completely disregarding Command instruction is no way to lead an outfit. Do that again, Recruit, and it's going to get worse for you than mere sass. The Commander runs a tight ship, despite the evident lack of ships.

The Sharps are pretty glad about being up front - less dust that way - and we string out the troopers in the rough resemblance of a spikey hedgehog, all bristling bows and spears and blades along the line of march.

The Stainfingers draw the short straws and form up the rear. They're going to be choking on everyones footfalls for the next long hours. We might want to consider cycling them out and around, or they'll be so sand-sore they'll be good for very little if we ever need them.

--

Rally Point Shadetree is the first point of navigation strung out behind us. Should anyone get lost, that would be the first place to try to navigate to - a few secured tents and buried barrels of medical kit might save a life.

The issueas it happens is twofold:

First, the rally point is empty so no missing supply clerks or lost wanderers here.

Two, eight sealed barrels have been pulled out of the ground beat to bits with breaker tools. A few smashed bits of equipment and some shattered gear is all that remains of this fallback, which tells us all

Three: Rally Points like this are small, marked out places near land marks. But they aren't exactly easy to find unless you know they're there. If someone's been smashing up our kit, cutting into our navigation, they must have found out or been watching us while some troopers set it all up. Chilling thought.

Everyone calls a break and catches a rest. Stretching a little. Raging Palm sourced a few last-minute pikes earlier, so the Stern Ravens catch up with us ten minutes later. Looks like we have a pike formation again.

Phridon briefly considers whether his reputation is as good as thought, and realises that it is, there's simply some small notational difficulty on this interface. What a strange thing for someone to think. Have some more water. That's probably sunstroke, seeping in.

March-Break.

You can suggest a rough marching order, as per >>6109537. You can also get up to no good thing otherwise, using one applicable skill and the Company ratings. Might be there's some clues or left over equipment here, or someone you want to give a talking to.

The troops are resting in the shade of the cliffs and enjoying being out of the sun.

>1/x??
>>
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Rolled 1, 2, 2, 4, 1, 2 = 12 (6d6)

>>6109603
>>6109449
>>6109429
Oh, you gotta know when to fold them, and when to be bold'en, and when to run . . . AWAAAAYYYY

>Before the march...

They say it's an ancient prayer 'round the tables in Kalcmir, but though Luz insists Icarus is less certain. But then Icarus is insistent that the Crowmasks are paramount for the ritual, because Probos - like all gamblers - desire shiny things. Should it be magpies, then, Phridon chimes in, shaving coins to help Luz, and well, maybe, but do you ever see magpies out here?

Anyway, lets crush these dice with hammers and sprinkle some water on the sand and be on our way . . .

>Collective Thaumatheurgy 12+1
>Company Warding 10
>This is a standard ritual, no modifier good or ill
>>
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Luz strikes a match and the masks burn. Little coils of smoke shear off and away into the high skies. The sun stares down, kindly.

To be on the safer side, Phridon whispers a few Empyreal prayers over the fire - trying to settle scores with Probos is usually a subtle affair so there's no harm done in intermingling a little Empyreal insurance. Probos, unlike so many other Icons, is not the envious sort. Or at least usually they aren't.


>That . . . seems to have worked . . . alright?
>Is anyone feeling worse?
>No?
>We might be fine.

>Probonic Invocation added to Thaumatheurgy Manual - you'll notice this later.
>>
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Meanwhile, elsewhere

After an hour of resting in the shade of the sunbaked house and the wind-break cliffs, Scarlett kicks off of the ground and adjusts her hair. Finds her best smile.

Nothing's moved down the village-way, and the heat shimmer is getting intense. Doesn't stand to reason: You'd think it got colder in the evenings out here in the sandlands, but for obtuse reasons that meteorologists fail to convey, the last hours before the sun finally dips beneath the horizon always feel the most warm.

Two of the spearmen snap in and tag along, and the more well behaved hounds.

The people here were friendly enough last time we went around and they have no reason to dislike us. This isn't even the deep wastes. Technically - though it's a very large technical and seldom enforced - this whole place falls under the august authority of the Kalcmiri Greenglass Throne, from the distant capital on the coast a few hundred miles down that direction. They should be taxpaying, constitution protected citizens of a functional state.

The fact that there's a dead dog lying in the streets in a buzz of flies when the little troupe rounds the corner puts an odd spin on that - four arrows in the dirt and one in the throat. The fletchings look . . . off. Not feathers. Some other material, stark and colourful in the gradually setting sun.

The road stretches on ahead of Scarlett. This place isn't big, just twenty-thirty houses of brick and clay and sunbaked other materials forming a rough X around a cross-roads between Here and There. The old building the Commander rented out for storage is up ahead. Behind the dead dog.

But the whole village and it's, what, hundred-some souls? Not a. . . peep.

Without being told to do so, one of the spearmen gently adjusts his longknife in the belt. Just make it easier to draw.

Okay lets not panick yet, this could be a feral scraghound roaming in off of the wastes in search of food and flesh. They do that a LOT and it stands to reason any village wouldn't want it to paw back to its pack and bring half a thousand of its hungry four footed friends around. And this could still all be some ritual holy day or village thing. What a professional would do is continue on ahead and check the centre of the X the village forms, because at the crossroads is where people would be if there's any people to be found. Largest, oldest buildings there. Good chance to spot any activity.

Conversely, what a cautious woman of cunning might do is to turn RIGHT back around and hoof it back to Zivka and hunker down in that abandoned hut at the edge of town. Worst comes to worse, it's a smile and a coin to convince any family who comes back home that there's been some kind of mistake and you just needed to rest there for a spell.

Though maybe it's worth investigating that dead creature and the village...
>>
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>>6109628
>>6109637
After being admonished not to steal anything - NO, NOT EVEN THAT - Zivka slinks inside the larger village and checks it. Two of the troopers form a backstop and her hound paws in, scenting the air, glad to be out of the sun.

No one's shown up for the last hour, so this might be the only way to get some information.

The building is one of those common types around here, wind-worne bricks and homely corners. Brushed by a hundred hands through the years. A large centrals square room with a few alcove splitting off and a stairway that leads to the roof. Looks well to do, internal furnishings decided. Not. . . disturbed.

The opposite, really. There's a central table of smooth wood with ceramic plates set out for a family of eight, six central pots with a few berries and roots in (local delicacy) and one singular loaf of black bread based on some crushed agricultural product.

Nothing has been touched. But they've put out the good cutlery, it's silver all the way around and sixteen pieces no less. That's impressive, for a place like this. Tempting to filch a few, they'd go for near a coinbit each.

So, what's this then? They prepare what looks like a light meal, pour some water in jugs and pots, lay out the bread, break out the biteroot and the salt, set the plates, decorate the table with a few figures of saints far and fancy, and then . . . collectively get up, walk out and walk away?

The bread is clearly still good. It looks soft, even. Freshly baked. The hound picks up the scent first but as it whines near the alcove in the back there's a small fireplace built right into the wall, which has the low trace of recent fire and bread. Clever artifice really, vents the smoke right out.

Alright, scratch the prior: They spend hours making bread from good stock, laying out plates, finding the nice knives, gathering roots and stingberry, set the chairs, dust the place out and over with the broom in the corner and THEN leave. . . ?

... ???

That frankly does not make it one bit less confusing. It's might be ritualistic but it's also economics. Let's not disdain the hard working frontier settlers, they're literally the salt of the earth, but socioeconomically they can't exactly go around throwin away perfectly good meals on a whim rather often. There's enough food here to feed eight people and be a feast. So where's the feasters?

One of the troopers eyes the bread. He does not lick his lips. But, well, I mean, the implication is there that that's what he'd like to do.

You've got hours till the dark comes in, a ready set table, free roam of a fairly well to do house which clearly has bits worth taking and no trouble. Not the worst thing to have found.

Any other genius plans?

( One of the troopers checks the roof: That's empty too )
>>
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From outside the building, a few soft footfalls - one of the troopers stick a head out the door and waves down Edward, rolling up leading a mule loaded down with far too much money.

Market's meant to be further on ahead, though Scarlett went down that way. Hey you see anyone on the way over here?

No?
No one?

. . . Strange.
>>
Wait a second here.

>>6109214
7 men

>>6109336
6 men

>>6109387
7 men

>>6109884
>>6109889
6 men

Did we lose somebody in our initial clearing search and then pick someone back up? And then he disappeared again? Something's not right here. Head back to Zivka and do a headcount.
>>
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>>6109897
Sun-induced paranoia is getting to you, recruit. Everyone is right where you left them - look, count it - we've brought six troopers along and two dogs in excess to Zivka's trained scraghound, and now here's you and Ziv and Martik and . . .

. . .
... Okay but if you find Edward that almost makes up for the fact that you seem to have shed two men and a hound over the last hours. Come on now, what?? That dog was right behind you! But as you peer over and around it certainly isn't now
>>
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>>6109599
Friends, friends, just find your friends, easy, simple, they're marching in column, so watch for the dust cloud and . . .

You get turned around - somehow you get turned around - and the sun beats down and the lengths grow longer and you backtrack your own steps and find that they lead you in a circle and the Wastes have you in their grasp and you do not have Compass to guide you out and you try to nav by the sun but doesn't help this time and then, oh no, you are off the beaten path, you traverse a dune and step past a rock and quite without meaning to you step into somewhere Else.

The ground beneath your feet shifts. Crunching. Tiny crystals broken by your boot. Sharp, if you're not careful. The sand here drinks blood on slips and tumbles. Bad place to be.

You glance over your shoulder -- no -- it's behind you too. This is how it always happens. Okay, no panic, there's training for this. Orient yourself, breathe out, breathe in, mask on (you did bring a mask, right?) and then simply retrace your steps and be very certain about doing so.

Jagged pillars of warped crystalised stuff cast twin shadows from distant stars across the ground.

The light shimmers different.

A backpack lies in a small undisturbed space, cast off by -- ufh. Poor fellow. Must have been out here during a storm.

You can hear the sharp barks of distant hounds, low, in the back of your mind. A soft laugh. The rattling of a gamblers dice cup.

Mask on.
Don't panic.
Step carefully.
Retrace steps with intent.
And then .... six times out of ten you make it out okay.

Unless of course you do something else ?
>>
Rolled 3, 4, 4 = 11 (3d6)

>>6109901
Bloody hell.

Set the dogs to the scent of the missing men. Let’s track down our friends- and give these wizard kidnappers a right talking to!

Animals 12
>>
>>6109901
Why does everyone keep assuming I am deserting? I am here to trade! You have to have something to give if you want to take, civilization cannot advance if everyone wants only to take - no offense to the Uthani, their quaint culture is so fascinating!

Now, you say there's no one in the market? How dreadful, we should investigate forthwith!
>>
>>6109945
I support this plan. Let's make doubly sure that we aren't bleeding off stragglers on the way.
>>
>>6109948
Please don't walk into the market by yourself with all our wages. At least wait until we do some tracking first.
>>
>>6109950
Actually I think this is another case I feel obligated to put my foot down. Do Not Allow Edward to wander into the village alone with the mule load of valuables. I'm sure the troopers would also take issue with this.
>>
>>6109950
It's only half our wages, not all of them. And it is nothing but a stroke of luck that I ran into you. We should, naturally, all stick together in the face of unknown shenanigans until they become known shenanigans.
>>
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Foot comes down. A few specks of sand puffs up. It's probably hard to shout down a fellow who has about as much authority as yourself, but Scarlett makes a try of it.

The remaining two scraghounds licks Zivkas hand and sniffs the air and paws the dirt, clever sorts. Taking taste-samples. And then with a flick of a bushy tail, one of them begins pawing down towards the village . . .

( Which looms, heatshimmered, silent, quaint, in the distance... )
>>
>>6109960
To the village, old chaps!
>>
Rolled 1, 5, 3, 6, 3, 2, 1, 2, 4 = 27 (9d6)

>>6109905
Lookit this numpty touching wot 'e oughtn't. Oi don't truck wif Uvva business, but Oi should see if 'e's wunna ours.

>Thoughts firmly on mundane matters. Focus 12
>Stay put, look at the guy and his bag. Senses 10
>Understand what this indicates about his business and origins. Thoughts 10
>>
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Rolled 4, 4, 3, 5, 3, 1 = 20 (6d6)

The same path walked before follows the same route. The same dead dog lies in the shimmering heat. One of the scraghounds sniff it, disinterested. The flies buzz away in a cloud.

This whole place is silent. Should be a hundred people here, yeah, and any else come in for market making and trade-hawking. A bannerline of fluttering clothscraps get flicked about by the wind. Cute. Some local weave-craft of cloth and leaf and whatnot. Looks faintly like a line in the sand, that shadow it throws down from above. Edwards seen this sort of thing before. Ships have the too - good luck charms, fortune winds, little offerings to anyone watching to speed you on your way. Scarlett missed it earlier - mind more on mundane ground based matters.

Another dead dog lies with an arrow through it near the corner of the larger central building.

That makes two. Unusual, actually. Scraghound packs send out little scouts, more cunning than you'd give them credit for, but seldom more than one at once. Zivka gives it a once over. Definitively feral. Come in off of the deep wastes. They roam it by the thousands. Wouldn't normally risk a village centre, actually, but here it is, dead by arrows. Wounds look congealed. Call it two hours? Three? Might even have happened while you were all gathering your wits and resting in the shade, earlier. Odd that you didn't hear anything, if so.

There's a trace of smoke on the wind now, some distant burning thing. Smells like . . . a cook fire. Bread? More feasts, prepared in houses uneaten? A quick look through an opening into one of the nearby buildings show a table, set for three. Black bread, nice plates, a few gathered roots and berries.

Scarlett racks her mind for any scraps of recent book knowledge. The hounds paw and trace and try to chase down a scent.

>Senses 10, +2 Hounds
>Thoughts 9, Well Read
>>
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Like most problems, it starts with a corpse.

A few more steps into the village and a few more eyes around, and a weird squiggle in the distance in the middle of the road resolves itself into a chair. A table. What looks like a plate, loaf of bread on it, and one un-tapped mug of something frothy.

And a woman, fallen sideways, slipped off of the chair and laying face down on the dusty ground. She does not move. Edward eyes Zivka who eyes Scarlett who checks on Martik and everyone feels like they don't want to be the first one to walk any closer.

The scent is heady here, in the village cross-roads. Bread. Cookfire. Smoke. This whole town has the subtle scent of a bakery in the morning. Did they all spend all their time making those loaves? Why not eat them?

Zivka knows it. It clicks, like the flint of a musket striking home. The hounds - it's been downwind. They've been lured here by the scent and trace of food in the air. And then someone(s) treated them to a meal of arrows.

One of the scraghounds whine loudly and paw at the door of the larger building to the groups right. The old one, the one the Commander rented - village wasn't using it for anything but tool storage, so we bought a few meters of ground and some out of the wind shelter for supplies. There should be six clerks here and six more guards. There isn't. And Edwards hoped for market day hasn't rolled around either.

There's a tension in the air. Something fragile, beneath the wind and the silence, the bubbling of potential.

Wait, hear that? The woman - she just moaned. She's still alive!!

Somehow the distance from here to her seem vaster than it should be. Dangerous. Which is a mite peculiar; this is only a small town in the middle of nowhere far and there shouldn't be danger here. But you're sweating profusely, the lot of you, despite the easy road down the way.

One of the troopers glance at the rooftops and glance down at the dead dogs, arrows punctured through their fur. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to. What are the odds those hounds sprouted arrows as a peculiar odd costume for a festival? Low. No. Someone's been hunting them as they come in, lured by the trace of feast in the wind.

No one is here now, of course. So it should be safe to step out into the middle of the crossroad...
>>
>>6109981
‘Cover me.’

Taking one of her many (four) medical Bandages, I try to steal her life away from death. The other two with ranged weapons can stand watch!
>>
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>>6109968
Something seems faintly familiar about the mae of that man's boots and the lines of his uniform. Poor fellow. Some other fortunefinding luck seeker. Must have tried stringing out his wind-shelter or tent beneath the crystal pillar. Rookie mistake. You can still see the metal bit meant for security a flap punctured into the crystal facade, but the wind must have roared out quicker than he thought. He's gone to Wrack now.

The stories always draw them in. The daring and the soon to be dead. They say there's a star out there in the sands, for the plucking of the first finder. They say there's a merchant in a scarf that trades sand for souls. They say there are leviathans, roaming the deeper wastes, vaster than forests. They say there's a lost city, the only city, the one city.

They say a lot of things. You ain't seen none of that lot in all the time you've been here, and most of the scavenge is just archeological artefacts, weird bits of rock and natural ressource deposits mapped and sold to the highest bidder for later exploitation.

That backpack looks vanadian make. Army isse. Probably full of expensive kit worth bringing back to camp. Or coin. Coin is nice. Any lonely soul with boots that good out here could afford the fine stuff, though apparently not caution. Judging by that, that man was light infantry, of some description. Which is curious because your thoughts turn back to the fact his uniform otherwise seems so faintly familiar. It looks . . . No. It is, you can tell form the cloak and the colours. That's a Pytherii style longranging uniform. That dead poor ill fortunate is a well equipped and well stocked long-ranging scout. By your guess from some Nobled House of the Pytherii realm. That would explain the expensive looking boots too. What the void is a Luperni or Cesteriphon or Cerco doing out here?

The wind is picking up. The dice rattling a little harder. Your long lost brother looks out at you from the sands to your right and then ceases to be and wait do you even have a brother?

Could chance it. Get that backpack. Guy might have more stuff on him.
Could try not risking things more than you've already risked today.
>>
>>6109973
I actually have Thoughts 10, gained the +1 from Of Hopes and Fears

#Scarlett
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Harquebus (4d6 Impact, Likely to Terrorize; Malfunctions 16+; Reload 3 AP; steps give -1 Accuracy; +1 Club in melee)
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Trapping Kit
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Gearwright 12
#Muskets 13
#Poetry 12
#Weaving 12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Hopes and Fears 1: Add Rank to resist terror; Major action to reroll Will for nearby ally; +1 to Influence and Thoughts
!Well Read
!Well Mannered
>>
Rolled 2, 3, 5, 2, 5, 2 = 19 (6d6)

>>6110000
Ah ye. Mum an' Pa Jove got very busy, let me tell you. Fing is, -Oi's- the long-lost, so this 'ere can sling 'is 'ook.

>Jove knows 'oo Jove is. Focus 12
>Get the pack an' leave. 'Oo wants to look loik a 'Ouser? Don't 'ate em, just don't loik em. Focus 12
>>
>>6109981
Ready my weapon to fire on any that would attack us. (React 9 + Muskets 13)
>>
>>6110023
I am not rolling because I presume such a roll would only be necessary were I to shoot, correct?
>>
>>6110015
You’d assume so, but if you remember the fatigue you’ll find it all shapes out rather like it’s meant to.

>>6110024
Correct !
>>
>>6109872
>NEW MARCHING ORDERS AFTER WE'VE RESTED
>>Navigate to Rallypoint Midnight Blue give Rion the Pathfinding/navigating stick
>>I think the Blue Rats can take point, they're Lucky 1 time out of 10
>>I'd like us to be marching in the same way except the Rearguard should be cycled
>>
>>6110064
>>6109872
and most importantly
>GO SLOW
>>
Rolled 4, 6, 3, 2, 1, 6 = 22 (6d6)

>>6109872
I wish I had stats for you Command alas I can't find them. Rion has Pathfinding-10 and Wicklighter has Logistics 12, that's what we'll use and were going slow for this
>>
>>6110065
>>6110064
No bones thrown makes it against for 4, unless you rectify this within the next six sandblown minutes.

>>6110066
Ah, good. Thank you kindly. As for statistics, we can find those - worry not. Rion’s fine with taking the lead? How noble.
>>
>>6109981
I'll stand shoulder to shoulder with Scarlett and ready my gun while Zivka investigates. We don't have nearly enough people for a proper line, but by golly we can try! (React 9 + Muskets 13, !Of Masks and Mettle bonus to Scarlett)
>>
Rolled 1, 6, 4, 1, 2, 1 = 15 (6d6)

#Wicklighter
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 10 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Alchemineering Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Longblade - +1 damage, Sharp
1 Coinbit
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 9
#Filching 10
#Alchemineering 12
#CQC 12
#Blades 14
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: If unengaged, add rank to first skill test. If engaged, add rank to all Reaction tests
!Rikovan: Can spend Focus as I would Stamina, and always regain at least 1 Focus when I Recover

>>6109872
While we rest, let's see if we can salvage anything of the broken gear, or anything hidden or missed. We're low, and every bit matters. No point letting it just lie out here, anyway.
>Filching 10 (11?) and RRR 13

I'd like to check the grottoes next, but splitting up and venturing into deep, dark caves seems like a bad idea when there's /clearly/ something malevolent acting against us. Not to mention how long that could take. Instead, it's possible that the old fort would serve as a landmark that the lost might hoof it towards.

>>6110066
Me? That's the company's logistics.
>>
>>6110242
We could task a few formations or squads to do it carefully, or send a runner to the main camp and request that Commander Isenfrii send some people to do it. It makes sense to do so - we haven't explored the cave systems, but if someone was hiding out here, this would certainly be a good place for it.

The issue is there's rather a lot of them. Some small, some barely more than a dent in the rock. Odds are we won't find anything, but it pays to bare careful.

Detach some units, if you'd like, or send a runner. Worst comes to worst, it's something else to consider.
>>
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Rolled 1, 5, 4 = 10 (3d6)

Zivka unrolls a roll of spare bandage from their belt, ducks low and sprints out into the cross-roads, sliding down next to the woman. Up close, she seems . . . younger than expected; not a child, but not a matronly elder either. She offers a weak smile and her eyes a dilated wide, a yellow cast to her skin. Some poison of some kind working her way through her system. The bandage won't help, but she does have fairly significant bump on her head and a matted bit of blood in her dark hair that Zivka wraps it around. That's not from her fall here. That's . . . well, it's always hard to tell but it seems like a club wound. As if someone battered her over the head. She's been out in the sun here for hours, hasn't touched the food on the table. She's trying to say something but she's parched and dehydrated and sun-scorched besides, so it all comes out in a croaking moan.

Twelve eyes scan the rooftops nearby for any sign of archers. Listen for the soft scrape of footfall on rock, a string being draw, the creak of wood. Was that something? No. Just a banner fluttering . . . Steady. Steady.

No. It's silent. Just the scent of bread, the soft rustle of the fortune-flitters strung out on their string high above and the gently pained moan of a woman that Zivka's bandaging up. Going for the water skin, gives it a shake. The slosh of it makes her focus her green eyes and Zivka can see her marshalling her focus to say . . . something . . .

>???
>>
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Zivka leans in. Offers some water. The woman lunges suddenly, clasps a warm hand around Zivka's wrist and rallies whatever mental fortitude she has to deliver a fairly important warning because whatever else she tries to say it ends in the word TRAP and that's as much warning as Scarlett gets before a shape rises on the roof across the road and the whistle of an arrow thrums the air -- two load shots return fire as Edward backs her up but this is a killing ground; one attacker ducks back out of reach and another drops - was that a hit?? how do you tell?? - the Scraghounds bark and roar and snap. Martik, quick on the uptake, hurls his spear and it slam into the facade on the other side of the road and then he goes for his belt long-knife - - -

>!!!!!
>>
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The troopers yelp and unsling their shields, try to get something solid between themselves and the incoming rain of sharp, lethal things - Ekin shoves Edward out the path of a projectile and flinches aside but another slaps into his shoulder and he yells in pain as Scarlett ducks low.

This all went to absolutely shit in five seconds and a little less. The woman has her hands clasped around Zivka's wrist and a manic grin on across her features.

"sh-sh-sh-shitty rescue plan, idiot"

Yeah lets pretend we know that's about. This is a bad situation. They have far superior position, cover and we're taking arrows in a cross-fire. Ten more heartbeats and you're all dead so if you have a plan, now might be the time to execute it.

Dive into a building? Rush one of the doors? Get out, back and away?

>OH VOID
>AMBUSH
>AMBUSH!!!
>FOCUSED TIME

Focused Time. You're AP limited. You have 9 AP.

Or, rather, Zivka has 9 AP. Edward and Scarlett are both Fatigued and have 7.

You have your Speed - you can spend it, as you are not engaged in melee.

You do not need a grid at the moment - distances are such that you can manage more-or-less as is.

Major actions are 3 AP
Minor actions are 1 AP - most quick, brief interactions.

Take some general actions, recruits, or you're apt to die here.
>>
>>6110272
Are we being shot at from behind as well? That trooper has an arrow sticking out the back of him, and those white lines seem to be coming from the north.
>>
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Rolled 6, 5, 6 = 17 (3d6)

>>6110020
You can crunch your way across the sands. Sometimes, your boot goes right through a surface that's more crystal than it is anything else. You have to pry your feet out with care. Your leathers are torn to shreds. It's starting to dip into your socks, which, heavy though they are, won't stand to this abuse for long.

It takes an hour to walk fifteen or so meters. You pass yourself. You think. Or maybe not. Could all be a mirage. You can taste almonds at the back of your throat. You didn't put on a mask. You didn't ward yourself. You didn't whisper any prayers of protection. You just walked right in.

You've given yourself a lethal dose of Shimmering and about six days to live. It's unfortunate. But that's how it goes sometimes.

When you get your hands around the straps of the backpack, your little finger on your left hand breaks off in a rain of crystalized rainbow shards. The backpack itself fits well on your shoulder. Like it was meant to be there. Like it was always going to be there. As if it had no choice. Unlike you rapidly disintegrating integrity the backpack is not Wracked, not so changed, no shimmering. It's not animate, no mind there for things to cling too. It takes longer for the Else to seep in.

Vanadian style, but the man - up close - yes, he's a Luperni, one of those Pytherii Nobled House, all trade estates and families and deals and money and plans. What's he doing out here? This isn't their territory, not by a long shot, and though they pay their operatives and agents well they don't pay them suicide-by-shimmer money. What's left of his clothes are fine. He hasn't been here long. Let's call it two days? Though measuring time this way is hard. What's a Pytherii doing with a Vanadian military backpack? Why is he dead? Questions - questions - the other Jove here with you shrugs. He doesn't know either. Sometimes, you just find mysteries in the sands for no good reason. A bead of sweat rolls down your forehead and turns to rock by the time it clings to the end of your nose. You shake your head and a spray of tiny pebbles land in the sand around you.

Maybe six days is optimistic.

>. . . is it?
>>
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>>6110280
You push out the way you came in - straight ahead. It's the most reasonable cause of action in situations like this. It's not like it can get any worse. Your sword breaks away into a flutter of ants. You aren't surprised. You don't even own a sword. It might not even be yours. It's probably the blade of some other Jove, one of the ones wandering besides you, pointing the way out. Somewhere beyond the quick four kilometer march you came in by.

Yeah.

. . . Six days was optimistic. Something catches in your throat as you breathe in, a rigidity that wasn't there before.
Well.
Hm.

Hope mum's alright. Commander's a good sport. He'll make sure she gets any overdue wage and pension and whatnot. You got a feeling you're not going to get to collect on that stuff.
>>
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Just gotta . . . find a doctor . . . medical . . . specialist . . . company . . . emergency warding by professionals . . . abjurat. . . mhm. . . well . . . maybe past the . . . next . . . dune . . .

huh was your hand always see through it's getting a little complicated to remember
>>
OI. What's that?

One of the lead Blue Rats, marching along at a fairly brisk pace, spot a weatherworne backpack sticking out of the sands and then a few seconds of curiousity later spots the man the backpack is attached to, though he is, admittedly, harder to see, half his body crystal flecks and the light bending strangely near him.

March Interruption
>We'll continue on our way to Rally Point Midnight Blue, unless adjusted.

Blue Rats report they've found a desert straggler in dire need of emergency medical assistance. Not one of the supply clerks, though. Looks like one of ours.

--

Wicklighter and some of the keener hands scrounge what can be used from Rally Point Shade Tree. Though most of it has been busted up by maul and wrath, some splinters can be repurposed. In a small cave, a few chests remain, untouched. Emergeny water skins, three spare swords and some tents and . . . Oh, lucky. A few gambesons. Must have been dumped here as part of a supply cache that was meant to make movement faster. The Stern Ravens certainly appreciate the extra equipment. That was a good find, lucky. They're slowly winding their way back to regulation strength.

--

We've got a dying man here with a lethal overdose of Wrack exposure. He's flaking away into non-existence before your eyes. Bad way to go. Anyone want to do anything, now would be time.

From some Void-damned reason, he's got a vanadian style backpack over his shoulder. Doesn't match his gear, it's not one of ours. It's got a . . . scroll-case in it, in a cipher, a multi-tool set, two carefully wrapped flashfire grenadoes and eight (EIGHT!!) sealed up survival rations stamped with a Luperni seal. That's a Pytherii Nobled House, merchant cartel group. They sell a lot of expensive equipment. Backpack must have come from one of their people...
>>
Rolled 2, 5, 5 = 12 (3d6)

>6110295

>Twist the man's luck so that he becomes fated to survives this wrack and emerge as one of the wrack-wrought.

<Mistbreath 12

Voice of Self-Preservation: "No, not that one. That doesn't even make sense".

<Probonic Invocation

Voice of Self-Preservation: "No, not that one either. You don't have a skill value for it or understand how it works. Try again".

>Iconotheurgy 12

Voice of Self-Preservation: "Fine. Go ahead. Remember to wash your hands afterwards".
>>
Hey look, it's another 12. I've been told that's good. Living on the edge like.
>>
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... huh. Strange lucky find, Rats. Anyone speak ... code? This doesn't look that complicated, it has a repeating pattern. Must have been done in a hurry.
>>
>>6110295
> Icarus absolutely insists on not allowing Jove past the camp's outer perimeter. The wrack-cursed fool is emitting absurd levels of background Potentiality. To the point that the phenomena is literally visible to the naked eye, you can see the rainbows refracting off the geometry of his soul. He needs to be quarantined away from people, and object with overly colorful histories, and errant NOTIONS. Icarus might be able to siphon away the Potentiality diluting and decohering Jove's very existence using his Fully Inert Blackstone, perhaps saving his life. He'll also need to go through decontamination to ensure that nothing exotic or *transcendent* gets tracked back into camp. Icarus will also need wards, and salt, and water, and perhaps assistance for the other Iconotheurges.
>>
Rolled 5, 4, 5 = 14 (3d6)

>>6110306
Probos, Join me in admiring the bones roll.
>>
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>>6110274
You spin around (1 Speed) and check behind you (1 AP, Sense) and get a good, solid read of the situation (1 AP, Thoughts)

Looks like they're behind you too - except that lot of them forming up near the entrance to the village itself appears to have short, wicked looking blades.

1 Speed
5 AP left, Scarlett.
>>
>>6110305
It's a shame I'm not with the camp right now, otherwise I might decode this as:

CadreCommand expect she's embedded with the Isenfrii Fr
Company and have hired them to extract a fireglass node.
Houondmaster wants her alive but the Company is expend
the Windsworn by edge of the low gradient shimmerfiektby the
village of Clayin, brief them on the acquisition protocol and
double their usual fee. They can have anything that's not the
Atlas. Lunar will be with them. She'll have more information.
CadreCommand suggests getting the team to sabotage the caches the
Company has been baying out. If can avoid a diplomatic
incident that would be preferable, so let them eat dust and
choke out. That way we don't have to explain half a theusand
corpses - onc they tire out, possibly extract the Atlas without
the Windsw Your prerogative. If that doesn't work, Lunar
takes local orders. If at any point it appears they're attempting

The Luperni must be getting lazy, only using a two-separated substitution cipher.
>>
>>6110306
>>6110301

You're right - better safe than sorry. This looks like a truly staggering amount of Threshold contamination - he's bleeding fractal lives and shimmering into pregrets.

We'll need to call a HALT if we're to set up a proper ward circle. Anything less and there's feedback risk. Or we might draw the wrong kind of attention.

It'd be kinder just to slit his throat and be done with it, but we might have the specialists to affectuate a emergency grounding of all this errant intention toxicity.
>>
>>6110315
Ultimately up to the boss.
Our Itinerary will get pushed back if you try to save Jove, but on the other hand - assuming he survives - you may end up with a freak of nature that's much more (or less) than human on the company's payroll. Having a wildcard is always useful.
>>
>>6110322
Sacrificing lives for the sake of a timetable isn't Commander Isenfrii's preference. Rumour has it that's why he mustered out of the army.

Our current tasking is a long range patrol. We're not on a schedule, as such. Though . . . If we linger here, and we know there's oddities around, it's likely this will come at cost of other things. If anyone is out at Rally Point Midnight maybe they need our help? Seems unlikely yet stranger things have happened.

It's all theoretical anyway. We'd need some way to ground the bleed, something to siphon the Potential to and something to fight the Wrack. It's complicated work with a slim chance of success.
>>
>>6110314
While Scarlett would've beaten him to it, Wicklighter's been scratching the cipher into the sand (with the help of some shields as a windbreaker).

"This letter confirms it!" Wicklighter shouts gruffly to the other officers, interrupting the proceedings over the Wracked man, "Someone's on our trail, and they want us to starve out instead of having the will to strike us down themselves! The Windsworn! They must be who wrecked that last rallypoint cache! Chances are the other caches are gone too, and our stragglers we're out looking for are already dead or-"

Wicklighter pauses, then swears up a storm. "Someone left just before us, headed to the nearby village with half a chest of coin! Edwins or something! It might not be too late for him and however much of our pay he has with him! If you thaumatheurges really want to make a go of saving that poor bleeder, we'll split, but either way we've gotta doubletime it to that village!"
>>
>>6110335
!!!

Curses and stinking corpses, swordthoughts, you're right. If we gather around for a proper ward and getting Jove square away, we're leaving anyone in that village to fend for themselves and that includes eight months pay on a mule for trading purposes. That's going to be a right nightmare. How will we settle Fascimile's gambling debts without that?

The troopers won't like it one bit. Good work on that cipher. Must have been written quick, it was relatively simple to crack. Mind like a blade, yeah?

Listen, recruits this might get dicey - the longer we wait here, the better we can set up a ritual. But we're not making it to that village OR the rally point if we're sitting here doing medical work.

We might need to make a few decisions or, or, worse come to it . . . split up. We could send some of the fleeter people on ahead; archers, blades, spears, they're fast enough on their footwork. Anyone tag along as a leader. Then the thaumatheurges can ward things proper and try to stabilize Jove.

Or, then again, what are the odds the village is in trouble? Bet you Edward and Scarlett and Ziv's slumming it with the locals, charming sons and daughters, drinking ale in the shade right now.
>>
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meanwhile, elsewhere

MY ARM
they're behind us too! the road back out - three spears! Dammit! East looks clear but for the roof archers - and the building behind us is silent
THERE'S FOUR PEOPLE IN THE GARDENS AT THE END OF THE LEFT ROAD
Voided flame where are they all comin from--- GET DOWN


your. . . rescue attempt . . n-n-needs . . . work (the woman still clinging to Zivka groans, through clenched teeth)
>>
>>6110355
right now..

Look, just because we've found one weird cipher in a backpack luckily is no reason to go panicking. Support team? Code names? CadreCommand? This is all starting to sound a little abstractly political. I'm sure it won't be so problematic.

Maybe we can simply take it easy, crack a water barrel, sketch a eight layer ward and try to fix whatever happened to Jove. Camp out here for the night. There's not much shade but there's not much anything, really. Good wind cover through the nearby dunes. Should be fine.
>>
>>6110328
Bah. No need to overcomplicate things.

If my Fully Inert Blackstone can't serve as adequate containment for the ambient Potential in and of itself, why not just channel it into a random boulder or shrub.
Choose a suitable (non-human) corporeal vessel, ward that thing to the Voidstar and back, carefully pour the nightmare reality acid into it, and then run like hell.
> Something to fight the Wrack
Eh, lets just force-feed Jove a couple fistfuls of salt, dust any crystal grains off his clothes, dump a bucket of water over his head, and assign him a month of latrine duty after the procedure is through.
>>
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>>6110370
Yeah that sounds like that'd do it. What's the worst that can happen?

If we have a Blackstone that actually functions with a high enough absorption level that might ... might! ... work.

Luz and Phridon gets ready, you find a barrel of water we get some salt on the man and we get him a new uniform and burn the last one, we link and force a transference . . .

Are you . . . sure about this? Hmh... Well. You are the Specialist. And that Probos Invocation worked . . . fine. I think?

>Here's half the manual for field Iconotheurgy
>What's the process and the rolls for the procedure you describe?
>Don't worry about AP cost - you can concievably work over a long enough time line.
>Any other Thaumatheurges with good ideas can chime in too.
>>
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>>6110308
>1 AP: "Everyone follow me! Inside and bar the doors!"
>1 Speed, 1 AP: get inside the building to my 23 ish (East, right from the player perspective, also to the right of my character facing in the pic I am replying to, pic related)
>3 AP: Close and lock/bar the door once everyone that is coming inside is inside


#Scarlett
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9(7) Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Harquebus (4d6 Impact, Likely to Terrorize; Malfunctions 16+; Reload 3 AP; steps give -1 Accuracy; +1 Club in melee)
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Trapping Kit
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Gearwright 12
#Muskets 13
#Poetry 12
#Weaving 12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Hopes and Fears 1: Add Rank to resist terror; Major action to reroll Will for nearby ally; +1 to Influence and Thoughts
!Well Read
!Well Mannered
>>
>>6110425
Once everyone *that is not an enemy*
>>
>>6110308
Zivka

Vitality 9 Stamina 9 Focus 9
Action 9 Speed 1+1

Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9, Reputation -2
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6

Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield & Axe
Ranging Kit
Tattercloak Quiver
Weather Cloak (Morale 1, Weather Resist 2)
Good Boots
4 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
More Pockets

#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Animalfriend 12
#Bows 12
#Axes 13
#Filching 10

-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Hopes and Fears 1
!I’ll Walk, Thanks

Haha!

> 1AP: Tell the scraghounds to sprint off and find help.
> 3AP: Cut the woman loose, and pick her up.
> 5 AP, 2 Speed: Hustle into the building.

Spend Stamina if absolutely necessary to make the distance- I shouldn’t think it’s that far, however.

‘No one touch the furniture! And *don’t* eat the food!’
>>
Rolled 5, 6, 5, 3, 6, 5 = 30 (6d6)

>>6110361
Maybe so, Command, but I'd still rather not risk it. If they're fine in the village, we can warn them about the danger and either bring them back to the contingent or stick around for strength in numbers if they've got urgent business.

I'd like to propose a marching order.

>Leave behind the Stern Ravens, Quiet Stainfingers, Reckless Ashfingers, Solemn Powderhands, Haunted Sharpshooters, Fresheyed Archers, Sunstained Spears, Bound Blades, Slick Slicers, officers with Thaumatheurge kits, and any officer who doesn't witsh to join me
>Bring along the Sharp Sharps, Ironwrought Banners, Coldeyed Archers, Windsore Archers, Windswept Blades, Slick Slicers, Eager Edges, Blue Rats, myself, Crushfists and any officer who wishes to join me
>Navigate to Unremarkable Village (Crushfists Pathfinding 10, Logistics 12, a Pathfinding 10 is probably better than Thoughts 10 or even Thoughts 11 for navigation)
>Crushfists can take point. He's fast, and it makes sense for the pathfinder to be in front anyway. Right behind him should be the Coldeyed Archers, whose initiative may be needed
>Swords up front, they'll be handy if worst comes to worst and we run face-first into an enemy in the village
>>
>>6110436
Ha, there go my dice
>>
>>6110433
Spend three stamina to make cutting her loose and picking up separate actions, as I’ve been told that otherwise, it will go rather awry.
>>
Rolled 1, 2, 3 = 6 (3d6)

Jove is Jove, an' there ain't no Jove but Jove.

>Rally all tautological stubbornness. Jove knows 'oo 'e is, an' 'e don't will his redefinition. 'oo is the Wrack to compel 'im? Didn't even punch 'im! Focus 12
>But the wiggly-finger funny-talkers can 'elp too Oi guess.
>>
I don't suppose anyone wants to propose a similar marching order to mine on the off chance that the second go around doesn't have diabolically bad rolls?

It feels kind of cheaty to even ask that question. Rolling the results of something before committing to it seems weird. Am I missing something?
>>
>>6110441
Have you? Strange voices you’ve been listening to, softsoul. We certainly have said not a thing.

>>6110536
It’s a larger operation where the outcome is the average of all the effort invested. Done this way, you can compensate if you see others make a mistake or try to account for difficulties if you spot someone has a good idea but bungle the execution.
>>
>>6110451
"Great job Jove but do try being bit more specific. Generally holding on to what and who you are is good. But more detailed you can be could help you to keep the smaller bits you of you unchanged."
>>
Rolled 5, 2, 2 = 9 (3d6)

>>6110436
Hop on with the boys.
Using (Pathfinding 10)
Time to help where i can.
>>
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Rolled 4, 4, 1 = 9 (3d6)

>>6110377
> With salt and water, Icarus carves the configuration displayed in the image into the earth, fills each line with salt, and then soddens the salt to water. Essentially, the hope is that this ward construct will help the Casters (Iconotheurges) to Shunt the excess Potentiality from the Source (Jove) into the Vessel (Blackstone) in a relatively safe and coordinated manner.
Any other theurges who wish to enhance or build upon this outline are welcomed to. Any assistance will be appreciated, but gawkers should stand well clear... in fact, you may want to avert your eyes and find something extremely sturdy to stand behind - just in case.
>>
>>6110585
Understood, Command. Hopefully the others can help me (and poor Crushfists. On whose behalf I rolled so terribly) out here.

>>6110593
Oh yes, /that/ way is south. Right you are, coppersoul, right you are.
>>
Rolled 3, 2, 3 = 8 (3d6)

>>6110590
Ye, doc? Awroight.

Jove's a thug. Jove always pays 'is debts, except to society. Jove don't care to list 'is vices, but a good scrap's among 'em an' the stimmies ain't. Jove learned prim an' propah speech from a boss o' 'is once, but 'e didn't loik it. Made 'im fink different. Jove don't much loik finkin' inna first place. A future legend just does it all roight, see?

>Wrack may not loik it, but this is peak performance. If it really finks it can improve on perfection, why don't it make anuvva Jove an' we settle this propah? Focus 12 (Incidentally, manifesting such an incredible if slightly lesser specimen should soak up a good deal of Potentiality.)
>>
>>6110603
Well well well. If that ain’t a classic Hoodin Transference Circuit with double-layered external wards unless I miss my read. Didn’t know we were dealing with a [i]scholar[/i]. I tip my head to you in respect as I run for cover.

You’ve got an awry tangle of luck in the north-northeast barrier line. Though I see you’ve improvised a direct Source-Vessel link and shaved time off by foregoing the usual Absorbs. Clever, if a little reckless… If we get overflow or Threads they’ll have nowhere to go. Does maintain the process purity and is easier to sustain so I see the trick of it. Still, there’s a quick fix, we’ll get another two water barrels over here and…
>>
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The troopers bust out the shovels and throw up an impromptu blast barrier to dive behind, a few others bring up water barrels and spare bags of salt. Icarus sketches his lines. The wind howls . . .

>You are trying an impromptu field ritual to stabilise a dying man. Any Thaumatheurge that wishes to assist can do so - you might wish to point out how, and read up on the proposed path of solution: >>6110603

Wicklighter and Crushfists are leading the rest of the Company off to the Village to secure the mule with money that Edward brought there - if you'd rather be with them, that's acceptable too and you can note this as a free action.
>>
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Rolled 6, 4, 2 = 12 (3d6)

>>6110593
Crushfists takes point and the blades fall in behind him, Rion checking a map and reminding Wicklighter to turn theirs around. Ah - right. That's . . . what's down that a way.

The village is not remarkable, nor is it really far. An hour of good march. It's pleasant enough terrain. The Iconotheurges and other half of the Company will catch up and you can all meet in the village. Which is a good plan anyway, thinks Wicklighter, because they're local, friendly and have both shade, shadows, succour and supplies. No bad place to rest. And if we do one of those Hearths and Minding things Commander Isenfrii so likes, it's possible any locals we come across can tell us more about this cipher we found and any movements of large groups they've seen around. Maybe find out who the Windsworn are, if they're dangerous enough to be mentioned by name in encrypted communications.

>Wastewrack Modifier, stable conditions, -6
>>
Rolled 6, 2, 5, 3, 5, 1 = 22 (6d6)

>>6110633
Have I ever read about anything of the sort? That man looks wrack'd out, alright. Is there any way in which Icarus' ritual can be modified to be more effective?

>Testing Thoughts 11.
>Contingent on the above, I will help out. [Iconotheurgy 12]

Sheet's fixed, btw. Idk where the idea that I had picked Blades instead of Spears came from, Command.

#Phridon
-
Vitality 12 Stamina 13 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
-
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 9 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
Reputation 2
-
Uniform, DR2
Shortblade, Sharp
Spear, Reach 2, Impales, Throwable
Shield [18HP, 3DR, +2Def]
Pockets with 2 entire coinbits!!!
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Whitebone Needles (Wards-12)
-
#Thoughts 11
#Influence 11
#Iconotheurgy 12
#Spears 14
#Religious Ritual 11
-
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Hopes and Fears 1
!Well Read
>>
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With a snapped command from Zivka the scraghounds tear off, bearing a message, barking loudly to draw arrow fire as trained many times. The sleek furry things are hard to hit at the speed they're leaping, and they bound down the side-passage and clip through an alley around the spearmen forming up behind you.

Everyone still standing split in the opposite direction, diving into a palatial looking building, the corner one, the largest on the street, which must be the house of the local village leader or at least some up and coming merchant or whatever passes for social clout around here. Arrows thud into the ground and kicking up puffs of dirt. It's unlnown terrain. We've never been inside. Unlike the building we negotiated for and rented from the village, a stout, secure long-term warehouse for provisions and supplies, we have no way to know if this random house in the middle of the street will make a viable place for a last stand.

But it might not need to be one - with a loud crack of noise a musket roars and it's neither Edward or Scarlett but a nervous looking supply clerk coming out of the doors to the warehouse we're sprinting away from, waving his arms, shouting desperately for us to GET INSIDE QUI-- but he's face is overcome with sheer confusion as the small group bounds towards totally unknown terrain rather than the warehouse and for his trouble he takes an arrow to the throat as more archers join the ones already perched on the roof and starts raining down death. . .
>>
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We slam the doors. Bar them. Good, solid wood. The world narrows to a point. One of the troopers shouts out he's found the stairs to the roof and sealed the internal hatch. A few loud THUMP THUMP THUMP noises indicate the boots the men above are bringing down, but the noise fades quick. They saw our guns. Our spears. They have no desire to attack a building sheltered armed opponents in a fortified position. Taking anything by storm is a bad idea, to be used only if you have no other option. They could smoke you out, perhaps. But . .. the building is nicely decorated. Stout stone walls. Very little wood. Wouldn't burn well. Of course, enough combustibles against the side of the door and the smoke will do you in. But that takes time. So for now, you live. You catch your breath. The adrenaline pounds and then it settles.

And you have a little time to glance around the inside of your tomb. It, much like the other building in this village, is built around a square central chamber with various alcoves for more specific use. This one however is large enough, and opulent, to hold a small detached room with a single internal door. It looks like something so mundane as an office, it holds a writing desk and a few shelves of various bits for keeping notes and filling ledgers. Reams of leather-bound paper-scrap. And a small folding telescope, brass and alloys, clean and shining against the background. Ah. Yes. Scarlett knows about these: Weatherlog Stations. This is not a Pytherii Waystation, but local villges often supplement their income by tracking clouds and selling the reports on to the Waystation attendents. This village must be in the business to. It's good, keeps track of the Wrack and the Weather, which would be important for their farming and their lives.

And then, of course, there is the Feast. This one is worthy of the word. Thick loaves of black bread, cups of clear water, plates laid out with military precison and silver cutlery around a frankly enormous long-table that takes up nigh half the room. How did it fit in through the doors? Edward spots it. Same type you'd find on a ship, sort of, in a sense - it's a massive folding table. Engagement mechanisms underneath let it be bent down for easier transport.

Not a single bit of food has been touched.
Though it's sure enough for ten people. Each plate has a small statue of a curious figure, humanoid, indistinct, long arms ending in long fingers. They're different than anything else, because they look home-made in a way that nothing else here does. Clay figures, then, shaped by recent hands. There's not any two alike, though they clearly depict the same almost-humanoid thing.

One of the troopers, brought there by stress and sun, slides down the wall. Starts laughing uproariously. It is a little funny. You're stuck inside the last fortress you'll ever hold, hostiles all around, who knows even how many, but the building you've burst into holds a feast fully prepared.

Bad luck? Or good luck?
>>
*’Don’t touch the damned food!’*

I angrily brandish my spear at the table. This spread, untouched, prepared and laid out for guests?

The guests are *not us*, and *those ones* you do not steal from- not less you’re a far swifter thief than me.

Stay away!

And Edward, can you help this woman?
>>
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A few more seconds pass. A trio of thumps roar out again, the roof-men testing the hatch. It holds. It'll hold for hours. They had bows, not axes, and breaking something like this with your bare hands is the work of stubborn fools like Jove and six hours of splinters.

Edward, reloads hastily, peeks out the door. An arrow SLAMS into the frame and he ducks back inside. Looks like multiple fast moving people out there, ducking, moving, the shuffling of feet. Not shouting, not making noise. They communicate with quick hand signals, looks like. Professionals at this kind of thing. Too much noise would give them away.

Alright, alright, alright, two muskets, two spears, one axe, one bow, four shields, one wounded man, one wounded woman, a nice table set for ten and a good stout building. Crassus had worse odds in the Pytherii Civil War, right? Field Marshall Aranski once took a fort with four men and nine-thousand-nine-ninety-six scare crows and a blunt museum sword. This can't be the worst thing that happens to you today.

The woman Zivka brought in has found her feet. She looks oddly steady. Takes two steps to the side, grabs a chair, and spins it out and away from the table then sits right does. Scoffs at the food. Zivka's quick snap word to avoid the food gets a nod. She agrees.

Gingerly runs a few fingers along the top of her skull, tests the bandage that Zivka gave her. Then rubs her wrists. She has rope burn there. Was she tied to the chair outside? In the chaos, it was to hell - she had fallen sideways. Maybe if she was tied, a small sharp thing, for hours, while we rested near the entrance to the village?

She looks woozy. Her pupils are still strung out. She's oddly coloured, even in here, out of the sun. Wrack? Poison? Something else? But she waves off Edward attention. Points a shaking hand at the trooper with an arrow sticking out of his clavicle and a profuse bleeding. He's trying to patch himself with one hand but it's not exactly winning any Free College of Medicine scholarships.

She tries to speak but she's parched.
Gives a little hand motion towards the water skins at our belts.

. . . well, yes, there's the rub isn't it. Six Company folk. Six water skins. Six rations.
Seven people.

How long is this siege going to last? Well, it's probably not a concer. They laid out such a feast for you, after all.
>>
>>6110651
> Give the woman some of my water.

What the fresh hell is going on here?
>>
>>6110651
>First Aid the wounded (Alchemineering 12)
>>
>>6110640
Ah, such a shame the inhabitants we had zero clue or inclination were actually present in the village we thought was a total ghost town only bid us enter the warehouse we had no reason to believe was secure and plenty to believe was a liability only revealed their presence and bid us enter after we had already entered another building. If we *had* known it was a stout, secure long-term warehouse with friendlies inside who would help us I'm sure the calculus would have been different. No matter, the building we did end up fleeing into with the best information we had at the time seems plenty sufficient.

>>6110651
After she is provided water, ask the woman if there is a reason, perhaps some kind of spiritual or ritual thing, that we shouldn't eat the food and water on the table should our hunger and thirst grow too much while we are here.

Also reload my weapon.
>>
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Fortunately, bandages are standard issue though when Scarlett starts talking to herself we know a simple bandage won't be enough to fix. Ziva offers some water. The woman takes it. Cherishes it. Slumps a little in the chair, not as rigidly poised now that she realises you aren't like the last lot. She doesn't look like any village local. They do bread their hair, like her, but they don't wear travel clothes with deep pockets and a few tactical inserts of metal to ward of the errant blow.

Scarlett asks about the food. It does look quite invite. And the woman shakes her head. Yeah, might be so.

" But it isn't for us. It's a friendship offering. A feast invitation. They made the locals do it before they drove them off. It's an old tale. It's food for the flicker-friends, yeah?

It's really a ... trick of a kind. You're have not been invited to partake by a host, so you take some, that's a hospitality insult.

Bad thing, that. To go spitting on hospitality. But you don't eat some. . . Well. You're insulting the hospitality too. Spit on the craft of the baker.

Can't eat. Can't not eat. The trick is to sit at the table. Maybe sip some water. Go long enough and you out last the feasting.

Just sit at the table, don't tocuh and last throughout the night. Harder than it sounds. They don't have table manners if they get going.

You lot aren't . .. From around here, are you? Wait, flames and candlelight, are you --- That's a uniform!! You're with the Outfit came through weeks ago! "

She's shocked, eyes wide - can't believe her luck. Or curse, as the case may be. Shakes her head. Doesn't say anything else for a while.

" ... ah shit I had hoped you were backup. Oh we are all so going to die here. The Windsworn are looking for you! That's why they took all the villagers! Just my luck. "

Optimistic sort, isn't she.

>We exhaust a bandage, though luckily Zivka brought extra.
>We exhaust some water
>The house seeem defensible enough, though there's no way to know what they're doing out there.
>>
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>>6110436
>>6110593
Leaving the Iconotheurges to their doing and the slower elements behind, Rion beats a steady pace towards the distant village. Civilization has its draws. As you close in on it, an hour or so later, the road you've only been dimly aware of beneath your feet slowly solidifies and the endless craggy landscape and soft sand yields to human hand. Slowly. Very slowly. Some walls are crumbing. Fences are broken. The sand rolls in. The cliffs loom. It is a harsh place out here, beautiful in its way, austere, but not exactly welcoming. Though it may bend to human artifice and will, it will slowly seek to slip free too.

It's been a steady clip. Can't say anyone is running out of water or falling over from heatstroke yet. Maybe all the marching out and the heavy work has done you all some collective good.

Swaying on the soft wind, a few fields of some vegetable sprout. Hardscrabble things. Chewy. It's a wonder they can even coax it from the earth. But to Stalwarts eyes it looks a nice enough feast, if one had inclination towards an agricultural lifestyle . . .

There's usually at least someone tending the fields but today it seems abandoned. Maybe they're all in the village. Edward went on ahead, after all, to make markets. Maybe he drew them in, all curious.
>>
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And then, bounding up the path at speed, a scraghound with a Company collar, a soft silken touch to its fur and an arrow sticking out of its back leg comes bounding at speed, tumbling in the sand, and then rolling to its feet again to keep going. Dedicated little thing, aren't they. Once you train them and they bond, they're friends with you for life.

The Blue Rats come up short and stumble to a gradual halt. That's . . . huh.

The whole situation gets stranger when, half a heart beat later, sprinting for all they've got, two figures pound down the road with bows in their hands!!!

... what the..

oh void dammit it did one of the Hounds get loose and into someone's chicken roost or some such? Again? That's the fourth time this week !!

>Marching officers can respond? If they'd like to?
>>
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Rolled 2, 6, 6, 5, 3, 6 = 28 (6d6)

The troopers dive for cover and spread out over the landscape, dipping into what shelter is available. A few of them wander off to form a proper perimeter guard and leave the speciaists to work. Aleksin checks the calculations. Someone else brings up another water barrel as Icarus digs out the lines in the sand and carefully readies them for work. Theoretically this is all sound. A perfectly normal transference field.

Now, of course, usually, one doesn't make these on sand with spit and hope, but inscribe them in hardened steel and inserted into marble flooring gilded with fireglass to insure the locality maintains cohesion. But in a pinch, sure, sure, a muddy channel of earth in the sandy ground and a few flickered prayers will do.

The blackstone, cool to the touch (it's always cool to the touch) goes in the middle. As a vessel. They're odd things. Angular. Blocky. Always a little larger in your vision than they should be, darker than they should be, the world a little dimmer around them, a little more quiet. The whispering is they can store anything, forever. Though that's theory. All Blackstones have flaws. Whatever strange quirk of metareal mecahnics allow their ability to endlessly absorb runs up against reality. Flaws. Abrasions. Quirks. You drop it once on the floor and with a soft crinkling sound it begins leaking yesterdays warmth.

Phridon checks the ward adjustments. The Tomes of Binding do recommend an eight by eight by eight but on sand, with no marble and no gold and no sigildry needles and no temple and no chapel and no choir well, maybe simply buff up the extra ward edges, refine the separation between Here and There and bring up another water barrel to siphon off any run-away excess.

Caedo dives for cover.

Luz whispers a prayer to Probos. Might as well have the laughing Luck Thief on your side.

Icarus concentrates and moves his fingers just so and nudges the world a little. It's always rather simple. Straight forward. Much less complicated than such a thing should be. . .

>. . .???
>Warded, +1
>This Is Not Going To Go Well, -10
>Massive Shimmer Exposure, -10
>Warding 12, Specialists 10, Good Back Up, +2
>Loose Conditions, -4
>Warding 12 - 21 (Personal), Warding 10 - 21 (Company)
>>
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Success! We're still alive!

>>6110637
>>6110603
>>6110301
The bound up wards and the salt lines held, and vented most of the feedback into the loops to contain it and bleed it slowly. Top notch theoretical sigildry, people. Unfortunately, the wind changed a little and the flurry of sand it kicked across the ward-lines got caught in the matrice and blew out the inhibitors so the water barrels started absorbing vast Threshold locality and flash-converted to two pairs of fragmentary steam-bursts. Luckily, it was all vented away from the practicioners and harmlessly into the desert. If anyone had been standing nearby that would have been like being hit with cannister shot. A bad time.

And look, the blackstone at the centre. It's faintly humming. That's new? That's . . . unprecented! Its absorbed true and pure Potential itself, the very stuff that dreams are made of! Can it even hold it? How? It's . . . changing colour?? Blackstones don't do that, the blackness is because they absorb so much-- nevermind the physics. We're alive!

>>6110610
>>6110451

Unfortunately, the patient keeps insisting on doing something he has no understanding of, in relation to a thing he has no comprehension of, for reasons he cannot conceptualise and instead of prayer, warding, salt, or seeking assistance with the specialists who has this as a job, this enormously underqualified amateur keeps trying to think he can somehow command the forces of the universe with enough moxie and willpower. And while that's certainly impressive and all, it gets you absolutely not one single shred of leeway out here.

The field collapses back down, the wards are blown out, and Jove has been split out across a multitude of dimensional fractals, his voice reverberating in echo with himself, each blurry hand only tangentially related to the material mundanity we find ourselves embedded with.

Let this be a teachable moment for the Company at large. As the scouts keep saying:

You take the long way around Shimmering Fields.

And if the Iconotheurgic Abjuration Specialists would allow themselves the time to add a few words, it might be something akin to "there is a reason we train for five years to do what we do and have specialist equipment. You can't copy it with raw guts and a plucky attitude, though it's commendable to try. You simply do not know the forces you are dealing with and they do not act like you think they would".

But that's a very long winded way of saying MAKE NO OATH, SWEAR NO DEAL, so we'll simply let it slide.

If you ever find yourself in a situation like this:
WEAR YOUR MASK
CHECK YOUR FILTERS
EAT YOUR PILLS
THINK QUIETLY

And once you're out of it, GET THEE TO A SPECIALIST. The more you feed the Wrack, the more it is fed. The more you are aware of it, or have it in your soul, the larger the hold grows. Acknowledging it at all is the first step towards the root it'll take in you.

Someone get a stretcher for Jove. We'll... well. Maybe it wears off?
>>
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>Icarus acquires a Energised Blackstone
>Well well well
>Haven't had one of these around here for the last three centuries and a half. You know that's Contraband under the Accords Sunlit? Not that there's anyone around to enforce it, haven't been for a few centuries but it's the principle of the thing.

It doesn't seem so different from the blackstone you held an hour ago, before this whole affair began. Except . . . for the one thing. You can hear a very subtle humming and feel the most gentle of all pressures.

And it has one specific and somewhat relevant effect.

Blackstones absorb elemental energies. Then they release them. You never get out more than you put in. Well.

Except if the Blackstone is energised. Then the relationship between input and output gets a little . . . variable.

Icarus feels strangely certain with a little bit of Focus he can probably nudge the output up, spending Focus to bolster what gets slung out. Perhaps if one took a Major Action using Focus alone, to release energy, something curious would occur?

--

>>6110610
Jove gets six months medical leave, a full pension and his backdated wages. And the subtle issue of most of your hands never doing what you want them to do and not being where you want them to be.

You can muster out, and we will inform you how to send in another recruit, or you can pretend that everything is as it should be and continue as is, but it might not be a very pleasant path.

Jove adjusts their existence . . .

>-2 Health
>-2 Stamina
>-2 Focus
>-2 Grit
>-2 Lethality (it becomes1d6-2)
>+2 Threshold (It becomes 1d6+2)
>+2 React

>Gain a trait !On Borrowed Time
Sorry fella. Some things you don't sleep off.
>Gain a trait !Uncontrollable Splitting, 11
Sometimes you just ... have more Joves.
>Gain a trait! !Multiplicities 2
Sometimes you just ... have more stuff.

The Company Doctors recommend you go take a long lie down and the early cash out bonus.
--

The company specialists brush up on their ward work. Impressive showing.

Luz, Icarus, Caedo, Phridon gain +1 Wards. This means your ward with kit is 13, and without, your Ward-Secrets are now considered trained, so gain access to the Secret at 10.
>>
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The world feels fraught. Sandpapered over. A Jove breaks out of the ward and sprints screaming into nowhere, disappearing in the distance both literally and metaphorically.

. . . Right. Well.
Hmh.

It would be proper to cleanse this whole site. It's a straight forward task. Takes half an hour, a few prayers. We've already done an invocation to Probos and the Empyreal today so we should have their guidance. We don't want too much lingering punctures in the Other. It might draw things . . . in. That would be unfortunate. Though it seems clear. The Blackstone was remarkably good at absorbing all this. Holding it. Strange.

There's no books about that, or any mentions of it anywhere. Phridon wracks their brains and everyone else collective thinks. It's not even in the Free College material on iconographic invocation, manifest binding or compelling of numenous vestigal exonomes.

You know what that means, people.
You make it out of this here desert alive, you can publish a paper on this! Multiple papers!

>... well now what?

Looks like Wickerlight and Rion led most of the footsloggers off of towards the distant village.

All the perimeter troopers should be around here, but they mostly dived for cover and went to ground. Actually, hang on, what's that noise on the wind? Is that . . .

. . . is that gunfire?
>>
>>6110769
Hm. Probably best to cleanse the area.
We're likely going to be operating in this area for a while yet.
Don't want to add Otherborne visitations and Extraplanar scavengers to our list of concerns.
Should be reasonably light work compared to what we just went through, uninterrupted too judging from the combative cacophony emanating from town.
The sounds of violence will draw in those inclined to violence, and ideally leave us in peace while we patch things up here.
>>
Rolled 1, 3, 3 = 7 (3d6)

>>6110744
>>6110744
>Tell 1 Blue Rat to take care of the Scraghound
>The rest need to get ready for anything
>"Hey you over there! Come over here for a sec. You're not in trouble (yet) we just want to talk (for now)!" (Influence 10)

#Crushfists
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 3
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Boostkit, Fuel 4/4, Speed 4
Wispcloak, +1 reaction, major to hide in terrain/cover, move and do at half
Better Pair of Boots
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Gearwright 12
#Closequarters 14 (Rikovol)
#Pathfinding 10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina and 1 focus (Rikovol)
!Of Cold Winds 1: Unengaged +speed. Engaged +dmg
>>
Rolled 6, 5, 4 = 15 (3d6)

>>6110724
This is a very simple application of the classic "So you are besieged by an overwhelming number of savage, bow-wielding natives" principles. Every man who spent some time in Her Majesty's service and was trained to embark to distant shores knows how to deal with a situation as common as this.
>Prepare our defenses. Cover points of ingress, place people in the proper places to deal with possible incursions, try to find a way to look outside without being noticed, figure out best way to sortie if needed. (Small Unit Tactics 11)

Scarlett, if you make some traps, I can improve on their payload after I'm done coming up with our plan.

#Edward
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
Morale +1
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Harquebus [4d6 Impact, Terror, Malfunction 16+, 3AP Reload, -1Acc per step, +1 Club in melee]
One Memento [Locket with her picture]
1 bit
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Alchemineering 12 [First Aid, Salt, Gas, Smoke, Fire, Oil, Salt, Acid, Stimulant, 1AP=1 point or huck 1d3 with major action]
#Muskets 13
#Small Unit Tactics 11
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Masks and Mettle: If you start adjacent to an ally, they add +1 to all skill tests and speed. Spend 1 AP on behalf of ally
>>
>>6110826
One trooper's watching the stair, and the man you just finished bandaging can grab his long-knife and shield and make a go of it. One more to watch the doors, and then Zivka, Scarlett and a Woman Who Hasn't Introduced Herself But Is Smiling At You.

You can lock this place down well. It's actually a good, fortified postion. The question is . . . well . . . the chairs, Edward. The table. The cutlery. When you "prepare your defenses", are you going to use all this readily provided material? It's a good, solid table. They're good, solid chairs. Make excellent barricades.

And yet . . . Hard to see how that doesn't disturb the array of food prepared for visitors.

Well. It's probably just superstition and local tales.
>>
Rolled 1, 4, 1 = 6 (3d6)

#Wicklighter
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 10 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Alchemineering Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Longblade - +1 damage, Sharp
1 Coinbit
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 9
#Filching 10
#Alchemineering 12
#CQC 12
#Blades 14
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: If unengaged, add rank to first skill test. If engaged, add rank to all Reaction tests
!Rikovan: Can spend Focus as I would Stamina, and always regain at least 1 Focus when I Recover

>>6110744
>>6110778
Wicklighter hustles forward with the Blue Rat, helping him and taking an assessment of the wound. Hopefully it's just a flesh wound, or otherwise something he can fix quickly. He's never gotten on /great/ with them, but the scraghounds are ever so useful, and trained animals are never as easy to replace as you'd hope. Especially out here.
>Alchemineering 12, or Alchemineering 13 if I count as unengaged. Since, you know, I'm not engaged.
>>
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Crushfist sets out to find out who these locals are but ends up having to jump in front of a Blue Rat with his knife half draw, swinging his shield his shield like a battering ram to connect to the face of one the archers. The unfortunate skinny looking farmer is knocked on his end, blinking, half concussed. Crushfist goes for a wrist-lock, stops the Blue Rat Trooper from doing something they'd all regret later. He mumbles a faint "Sorry". Eases off the throttle a little.

The troopers get touchy about the animals. They work hard and do so much of so much use.

Wicklighter ducks out ahead of the formation. One of the other troopers has got the hound calmed down, it's taken shelter half behind their impromptu shield wall, and he's feeding it a bit of spare pocket kibble. It's got an arrow - barbed looking hunting thing - clean through its back leg. Clean puncture though, right through. It's painful but extraction is possible. The bleeding has already mostly slowed to a trickle. The scraghounds are hard. Wicklighter nods at one of the Rats, who grabs the scraghound and mumbles soothing noises. Extraction barbed arrows is a hellish job at the best of times. One. Two. *Snap*. The hound yowls, but there. The head is clean off in Wicklighter's hands ,and the other end of it can be pulled out back the way it came in. Antiseptic bandage, carefully wrapped.

The pain forgotten soon after, the scraghound runs a rough sandpaper tongue over everyone. It has a leather collar on, dusty as everything else. This is . . . one of the larger ones. Zivka's? She trains them to range with her, finding things, noticing scents the human nose can't. What's it doing here, of all places?

--

Crushfist meanwhile - Blue Rat rage quelled for now - stares down two shabby looking runners. One of them is nursing what is definitively going to be a black eye later. The Blue Rat trooper is not sorry. But the two men are. Realising THIS particular scraghound, out of all the infinite array of the ones the Waste throws out, belongs to a larger pack of humans and that that pack is heavily armed has taught them contrition at remarkable speed. The story slips out through their teeth through a profusion of apologies and excuses . . .
>>
>>6110724
Use !Of Hopes and Fears to encourage and rally the men, despite being trapped and the temptation of the feast. The Scraghounds *will* find help- and when the rest of the company arrives, we’ll have our bloody dues!

3d6 vs Influence 10, +1 for Edward?

Volunteer to sit at the table, yet conspicuously touch nothing.
>>
Rolled 1, 2, 6 = 9 (3d6)

>>6110924
(Dropped my dice)
>>
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Scraghounds - the feral ones - come in packs. Small ones, a family or two. Average sized groups. A few families. And the large ones. The roaming enormous prowling packs. They boil out of the deeper Aikan wastes, none two quite alike, part hound, part wolf, part something else. They're an endless bane of the smallholding farm frontier villages and hamlets that dot the landscape out here. A bit like the sand. You'll always find a few, prowling about.

And the packs have a surprising intelligence. They send scouts out sometimes, to find meals. The big ones aren't shy about ambushing creatues they think they can take. Twelve feral things with sharp teeth and two lonely farmers bent over trying to make the barren soil sprout green? People around here all know someone with bite-marks on their arms and legs.

Of course, if you can find one young, without a pack, bond with it, teach it, train it, they're remarkably intelligence companions. Well mannered ones go for a sizable bounty. They know the landscape like few others do. The paths they walk so very seldom lead you down something you'd rather not be near.

Still, for all that we use them, the farmers and people out here have a fairly ingrained response to seeing one bound across their property. The arrow Wicklighter just extracted from one of the Company Mascots is evidence to how often they get to practice that response.

Which - all in all - is what they've told us. They have a small farm down the ways, this is part of the outlying fields for the nearby village. They saw the hound, five, ten minutes ago, running like the sun was chasing it. Figured it was looping to report to a larger pack, share whatever it is they do. Tried to stop it.

Absolutely - categorically - they very much apologize for trying to shoot it now that they know it belongs to US.

--

Crushfist, half listening to their story, notices a few things.

They've got callused hands. Used to hold the hilt of farming tools. Possibly other things.
Those arrow fletchings are professionally made.
The bows are good handiwork too. Not some farming hand-me-down.

Normal enough, far as it goes. Plenty of young sons with time to craft and care for their gear.

But they have red marks on their wrists. Bruises, from earlier snapping of bow-string against flesh. And those they have quivers are pretty full. How do they work up archers bruises but have a full quiver? You'd only see that if they'd grabbed a fresh quiver after exhausting one.

The Bruised one has an ear-ring. Good golden metal. Expensive. You don't get that as a farmer.

This is a pair of gentlemen thieves, pretending to be agricultural smallholders. But why?
>>
Rolled 6, 5, 1 = 12 (3d6)

>>6110724
Set up Pressure traps by the entrances with my Trapping Kit. Pay mind to allowing Edward some way of peeking outside if he finds a way. (Gearwright 12)
>>
Rolled 6, 5, 4 = 15 (3d6)

>>6110826
>>6110845
>Simply offer a performance of dance to the hospitable host, -
OI
>- who can hardly refuse the gesture, being treated so graciously even in their absence.
SHADDAP STRATAJOVE
>Naturally, some furniture must be rearranged to make room.
OI PUT YOU AWAY
>If some uncouth ruffians then upend the relocated feast as they kick in the door, who could blame you?
...
>One might even be so bold as to volunteer to dispose of the food spoiled by the floor.
It just ain't roight...

>>6110768
>On Borrowed Time
>It's the same picture.
>Jove's library days return and begin to take form! Oh, the indignity! Uncontrollable Splitting 11 (It's Jove but more polite and putting a lot more forethought into mayhem)

#Jove
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 8 Focus 10
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 8 Grit 8 Sense 10 Strength 11 Reputation 2
React 11+1
Lethality 1d6-2 Threshold 1d6+2
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Wispcloak, Major to hide, halved move-do penalty
Halberd
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
A coinbit
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Gearwright 12
#Polearm 13
#Carousing 14
#Uncontrollable Splitting 11
-Traits
!Armored 1
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Hopes and Fears
!Multiplicities 2
!On Borrowed Time
>>
>>6110929
Wicklighter isn't used to being shown affection by scraghounds. Letting a big one put its mouth anywhere near his hands is sort of setting off his fight or flight instincts. He holds still, though. He's heard from the people who actually keep these things that this is good and lets them get used to you. That's not the worst thing ever.

Hm. If this /is/ Zivka's, that would... hm. Hmmm. They went MIA on perimeter patrols, but her hound turns up near this village. What takes a perimeter patrol to a village that's already got a warehouse rented by the company? That's one of the-

Well, hm, no, they were also looking for the missing wagons. It's as reasonable to come here looking for that as it is to go to a rallypoint looking for stragglers.

Still, it was running at a dead sprint. Towards them, and they're going towards the village, so it was probably going /away from/ the village. Or they could just have chased it this way. Though it'd take a hell of a run to herd a scraghound at full speed in any direction, intentionally or otherwise.

So, what, it just got loose while Zivka was at the village, took off? Would it be running so hard if that was the case? He... didn't really know. He /imagined/ a scraghound wouldn't sprint in a desert unless it really had to, so probably not. And there's no way it's run /through/ the village, it doesn't look nearly tired enough to have run that long. And Zivka seemed like she treated her hound pretty well, so it wouldn't run to escape her, would it?

...Shattered shields, all this deductive reasoning was /not/ what he signed up for. More fool him, really.

Right. Facts. So Zivka's hound has just turned up going away from the village. It was running, and proooobably hasn't been keeping that up for long enough to exhaust it. Zivka's hound is well-trained and loyal and probably wouldn't have run off without a reason. 'Probably' is good enough to be careful right now.

Maybe Zivka died and it wandered off? Found itself near the village, got chased away? Maybe. Seems... mm. It was already running when these farmerfolk saw it. Someone else could've chased it away and it just... kept running until it met these two? Mm. Not entirely out of the question.

What else? It's not chasing anything, or the farmerfolk would've seen it as well as the hound. The hound was just running.

There's also the possibility he doesn't want it to be. This is recent. Not too long ago, Zivka's hound had /some/ kind of goal in mind that it ran to fulfil. What?

Tracking? No, there's no point if the hound follows tracks faster than you can keep up.

Find and retrieve? /What/ exactly would there be to find in the sands, and why send a hound running after it- the hound wouldn't be running anyway, would it? Unless it knew where it was? But then Zivka would want the hound to lead her to it, or would otherwise... mmm. It's /possible/. Stick it in the skull for later.
>>
>>6110929
>>6110983
No wait, there's a way to test that right now, isn't there? Just /let the hound go/. See if it heads anywhere with purpose, try to follow it. If so, it's got somewhere to be. If not... well, then back to thinking. It's worth a try, at least it'll strike out an idea.

Wicklighter slowly withdraws from the scraghound after a tentative ruffle on the head. "Go on!" he encourages it in a very put-on playful voice—one wonders if Wicklighter ever naturally sounds like this. "Where do you want to go, hound?"
>>
Rolled 2, 2, 1 = 5 (3d6)

>>6108841

#Markhan
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 1

–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6

–Kit
Breacher's Kit, 4DR, 2DR on Limbs
Shortblade, Sharp
Halberd, Two Handed, Sharp, Impales, Shatters
Shield [30 HP, 5 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt

-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Polearm 13
#Small Unit Tactics-11
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Masks and Mettel 1: If you start *adjacent* to an ally, they add +1 to all skill-test and speed. Spend up to Rank AP on behalf of ally (caps per ally)
!Armored Advance: Intentionally body slam targets when entering their tile, deal 1d6+1 per straight line movement prior

>Breacher Kit
>Polearm Training
>Of Masks and Mettle
>Raise a Banner: Pikes-11
>Hire a Specialist who assists in Refit, Repairs and Refinement.
>Receive your dues, get paid 3 Coinbits while I: Honor the timetable, harsh though it my be (test Tactics 11)
>Spend Coinbits, bring another lost soul. 1 more man can't *seriously* muck up a line of pikes, right?
>>
>>6111036
A pike formation proper is ruefully hard to do wrong, conveniently. Practically unheard of! Though I'm sure the Troopers will find a way.

Good on you, Markhan, for taking the time to make sure all the laggards and slackers get mustered up and out in time. The Stern Ravens were a bit bungled up for lack of armor - your speedy arrival with some spare supplies will alleviate that for now.

>We've FINALLY repaired some armor on our dinged pikes and fixed some gear on our blade. Good work, refitting all that stuff.
>+1 Stamina, for a quick march
>-2 Rep, for forcing everyone else to keep to the timetable, add it like a attribute. They might respect it but they don't like it.
>+1 Small Unit Tactics, for keeping men moving
>+1 Influence, to nudge them along.
While you get settled in with the dust-plume of everyone else, >>6110929
>>6110918 you can issue some general orders or get things shaped up. If you like. It appears Crushfist and Wicklighter have found a pair of locals hunting our dog, and that that same dog is one of the missing Company mascots. There's a village down the dusty road that might hold more answers.

Maybe the locals have some insight.

This whole situation is making my palm itch, though. And not in the "I touched the wrong crystal" kind of way. The way I see it, right, Sir, right, if'n there's a village down thataway and we're strung out along the road to get there AND a good lot of us are still an hour behind. . .

Well, fifty sudden archers and we're all fertiliser for those fields to our right. but then again I'm inclined to paranoia as a professional instinct. I'm sure the locals are perfectly nice.

>The response force is currently strung out on the road, taking a few breaths, grabbing some water.
>You can issue a general command, get up to no good thing on your own, or help the Company specialists do something you feel now might be a good time for.
>Maybe things get more exciting soon?
>>
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Rolled 4, 6, 1, 6, 1, 1 = 19 (6d6)

While Crushfist and Wicklighter fuss over the scraghound and the locals, the rest of the column shakes itself into a slow, gradual march again. Having stolen a few minutes of respite from the sun in the avenues of the cliffs and shadows of old crumbled buildings, everyone is feeling ready for a few more minutes of dusty road.

The old entrance way to the village slips into sight, around a bend. Used to be grand things. You find them everywhere. Boundary markers for territory. Sometimes there's nice statues attached, or little poems in unreadable script.

These days its mostly crumbling away. Wind isn't kind to the stone facades and the villagers don't have the tools, the training or the trick to keep it repaired. Nor do they want to. It was here before they arrived.

>...
>>
With its leg bandaged and friends nearby the scraghound rolls around in the dirt, bites at its own tail and chases a flittering insect for a few prowling steps. You'd be forgiven for thinking it was like all other dogs in the wide world.

You'd be wrong.

And then, sudden, sharp, loud, it BARKS. Wicklighter takes a surprised step back, ducking into the first guard, and Stalwart blinks. Plucks at his hear. What the-

BORK BARK BORK BARK BARK BORK

It bounds around Wicklighter in a fluid fast circle (imagine, here, briefly, twenty more of its kin, teeth sharper, claws crueller, teasing a group apart bit by bit...).

Good energy for something that had an arrow in it a moment ago.

And then with another BORK it bounds away from the group-- heading straight back down the road it just came up. What the blazes?
>>
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The lead spearmen stops short, confused by the sudden eruption of noise. Rion and Raging Palm jump for the scraghound, trying to get ahold of its collar. But it's fast and it's not stopping, it slips right through their grasp -- but stops. It does not enter the village.

Instead it plunks itself right down in the middle of the road and HOWLS. They get like this sometimes. Excited beyond all reason for no reason. One of the Ironwrought shift the grip on his spear, about to poke it with the blunt end to grab its attention and offload its distractibility to the snack he holds with his other hand . . .
>>
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Probably saves his life, turning around like that. Score one for man's best friend.
>>
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!!!!
WATCH OUT
!!!!
>>
>>6111156
Oh, we were much closer to the village than I thought. Funny thing, navigating by drawn map.

Alright then, blades up. It'll be a lot of running for those at the bac- oh no, wait, they're over there too. Good! Windsores, ready bows to the southeast!
>>
AMBUSH!!
--

Void take it all what is happening?? Quick!!
GET INTO POSITION!!

You've had some mild forewarning of impeding trouble, so you're not taken totally by surprise. Things are still chaotic but you might be able to save this one yet.

Get into POSITON by picking a point nearby allies. This is a free action. You are sprinting there - you might not end up exactly where you want to be.

Then take SOME SORT OF NORMAL ACTION, NON-OFFENSIVE ACTION - you have 9 AP, but don't need to spend it all on this pre-positioning phase. You can't attack, so don't bother - but now might be the time to shout orders, take cover, form people up, defend, sense and think, grab things from your kit, so on.

You **MUST** spend 3 AP to READY YOUR KIT.
>>6108841
So far, Command has been very lenient on what was in your pockets on the assumption that things might wish to change. Now it's blades up and shields out. Now it starts mattering. If you want to have something else than what you had, finalise any adjustments NOW.

When you respond to this post, include an up to date character sheet.

That way, you won't have to *keep* reposting it every turn. It'll be linked to the start of the combat.

Being a persnickity little pedant, Command will notice that unless you READY YOUR KIT and update your papers, as instructed, you'll spend the first two combat turns stunned, confused and defenseless because you're clearly taken by surprise!

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sSQ_Mz4QhY

If you are an Iconotheurge stuck behind the map, or a bunch of hapless explorers stuck in the village, the above does not apply. Yet. You have bigger problems.
>>
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>>6110826
>>6110924
>>6110958
Scarlett follows Edwards instructions and prepares the doors and stairs and other entrances to be a mean surprise to any intruder. Snapjaw traps and a few bits of string, a little pressure in the wrong place.

Edward can't do much else, other than shout verbal instructions and get the wounded spearman back in the fight. Hard to set up an obstacle or block the doors when the largest table and all the furniture in the room are set up to prepare for a feast.

The Woman sees the hustle and bustle of hectic activity and slides off of her chair. Crosses to an alcove in the corner with intent and roots around, searching. With a yell of triumph she spins around, showing off a bottle of dusky looking liquid slooshing inside a container. Hah! Score! She pops the cork and takes a chug, then winces and wipes her lips.

" Hey, it wasn't on the table so I take it that's fine, ritualistically speaking. Man I hate being under siege. Reminds me of Wellmoth. It's all the waiting, you know? You start hearing every little creak of the old place as the sure sign of sappers. I don't think they'd try sappers but the Windsworn are a peculiar lot, they might at that. "

She throws a glance at the hatch in the floor that leads to the storage basement, cool and out of the sun. Pops it open and squints down into the darkness. Any hope of an exit is dashed - four empty barrels and the scent of flour. The village must have dipped enormously into their pantries to produce all this bread for the strange not-guest feast. The Woman shuts the hatch with a sigh.
"
" Alright, so much for that. "
" The Scraghounds *will* find help " Zivka interjects, trying to force certanity into her voice. Martik nods. They're good, clever things.

" *And* when the rest of the company arrives, we’ll have our bloody dues! "

" If " the Woman takes another swig, winces, shrugs. Offers the cactus juice to anyone else interested.

" If! " Zivka snaps back

" Yeah, *if*. I'm all for hoping for heroic rescues but my last lot turned out to be a sun-bedraggled group of mercenaries and waste-walkers, you're not exactly knights in shining armour, no slight, plate would be boiling around here. How's about we rescue ourselves, rather than sit around waiting for someone else? "

Edward risk another peek out the door. No arrow this time. One of the six guards outside, other side of the street, behind a few barrels for protection against musket fire, give him a cheery wave. Edward brings his gun out. The guard jabs a thumb at the nearby rooftop where four more archers are perched, weapons ready. You really want to do this? Come on. Take your one shot and then you know we'll simply rush the building before you reload. The silence look communicates a lot. Edward frowns. He's Illiosi! He could get off TWO shots before the building was stormed.

Scarlett pulls him back inside.
>>
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" Weren't you moaning and groaning and floored five minutes ago? "

The Woman shrugs.

" Life and death situations make the pain feel less. Hey, here's a play - what if your handsome friend there with the lovestruck eyes throw a smokeflash out the door and we ... Hm. " She trails of.

Edward nods. Yeah, no. Archers. Arrows have the right of way. They wouldn't need to hit anything precisely, just fire blindly into the smoke. Too high odds of being clipped, given there's so many archers. Would be better if there was more confusion.

The Woman taps her fingers on her palms, thinking. Gives Scarlett the once-over.

" Fragmentation charge. We wire some of these sharp bits in your pockets into a blasting charge, huck it out the window and . . . "

Edward shakes his head. Spherical dispersion of fragments and the shockwave would harm the people outside. But that's probably why they dragged over the barrels and hunkered down. At best, they'd be confused for a moment and then recover. The Woman gives a little groan of frustration. Thinks. Jabs a finger into Zivka's uniform, testing the padding. None too shy about personal boundaries at the moment. Takes another swig of cactus juice. And then her green eyes go wide and she almost chokes with excitement

" Rooftop! We go by the roof! Up the stairs, over to the other building, dead sprint, drop down in the bushes!! "

The spearman at the stairs winces a little. He's pretty sure he's heard some boots shuffling around up there. Yeah, it has cover from the ground, but dead sprint across equal-elevation terrain against archers? Nooooo.

Edward saves him the awkwardness. Too high chance one of them fails the vault to other roof. And then you're ground side with a broken leg or worse.

" Come on! " She grins - she's not even frustrated, really. Seems more excited than anything.

" There has to be *something* we can do. What about tying one of your smoke-flasks to the arrows of our friend here " She jabs Zivka again " you open the door and lay down surprise fire, they all duck for cover and *then* your cute friend here flings the smokeflask up at the largest group of archers. Then those brawny fellas of yours *rush* the groundsiders, and we simple make a go of it! "

" I don't think the manual recommends abandoning a fortified secure position for a sally against numerically superior forces " Edward responds.

" Manual's boring. Alright. Alright, alright. What if - what IF "

Scarlett adjusts the gear-lock on a trap release near the door. It slides home with held tension almost as tight as the brittle undertone to the Woman's voice

" What if we just shout 'We Surrender' and find out what they want? "

Oh yeah, surrender to Wastewanderer marauders. That's going to go well.

" Hey, last time they only tied me to a chair " the Woman offers by way of continuation

" Maybe we get a better chair this time? "
>>
>>6111176
‘You should all at least rest first, until you’re not so [Fatigued]. No sudden dashes until then!

I’ll keep watch, and we can rotate who helps me. Bit of silence will help you think, too.

Of course- I’ve a feeling that help is on the way. Shan’t trust a fucking horse as far as I can throw it, but dogs have never failed me!’
>>
>>6111178
" Sure, wake me once you've come up with a cunning plan or the Windsworn are here to slit our throats and empty our pockets "

Eyeing one of the nearby sleeing alcoves, she slides into it. Positions herself a little. Grumbles about the rockface - all the pelts and cushions are missing.
>>
>>6111168
#Wicklighter
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 10 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Alchemineering Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Longblade - +1 damage, Sharp
1 Coinbit
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 9
#Filching 10
#Alchemineering 12
#CQC 12
#Blades 14
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: If unengaged, add rank to first skill test. If engaged, add rank to all Reaction tests
!Rikovan: Can spend Focus as I would Stamina, and always regain at least 1 Focus when I Recover

>Sprint into position somewhere between the northernmost Blue Rat and the trio of them.
>3 AP: KIT READIED AS ORDERED SIR
>1 AP: Blue Rats, Form Up!
>1 AP: Blue Rats, Shields Up!
>1 AP: Windsore Archers, Form Up behind that low rock wall just next to you!
>3 AP: Embed within the Blue Rats. With me now, bladeslingers!

Some of our banners are closer to forming up than others, but they all should probably form up. There's no 'close enough' formation that soldiers adopt. But that's why there are other officers. So he doesn't have to try and direct every banner on the field.
>>
Rolled 3, 2, 1 = 6 (3d6)

>>6110769
I concur with Icarus. Let's clean this mess up. In addition to that, I'm just going to think *harder*. Is there something, anything, no matter how fringe, theoretical, or debunked about Blackstone's ability to absorb? Something even tangentially-related so that we're not completely in the dark.

>Wrack my brain even harder. This cannot be the first time this has happened. Even if it is, someone somewhere must've theorized that something like this is possible. Surely. Right? [Thoughts 11, !Well Read]
>>
>>6111176
On the bright side, having so many of them keeping us in here means any rescue attempt is going to have an easier time. We'll have a good flank on them if fighting starts outside.

In the meantime, I agree with Edward, let's get some rest so we'll be ready when the time comes.
>>
Rolled 3, 4, 5 = 12 (3d6)

>>6111117
Bloody Crows, the buggers just had to make a whole show of feathering their caps this morning, took us a whole hour to get on the road. Thank goodness the column stopped, we might never have caught up in time.

A general order? Might as well tell them too-

>>6111156
>>6111168
-Ah. ...Void take them all. Pikes! Into position! Cover whichever damned rat that is that's out of position!

#Markhan
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 13 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 1

–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9 Reputation -2
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6

–Kit
Breacher's Kit, 4DR, 2DR on Limbs
Shortblade, Sharp
Halberd, Two Handed, Sharp, Impales, Shatters
Shield [30 HP, 5 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt

-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 11
#Polearm 13
#Small Unit Tactics-12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Masks and Mettel 1: If you start *adjacent* to an ally, they add +1 to all skill-test and speed. Spend up to Rank AP on behalf of ally (caps per ally)
!Armored Advance: Intentionally body slam targets when entering their tile, deal 1d6+1 per straight line movement prior

>Markhan gets into position next to the two captured villagers. Close enough to direct his Crows, far enough to be covered from all angles.
>3 AP Ready Kit, as ordererd!
>1 AP Resolute Crows, get position behind the middle rock, south of that Blue Rat currently *out of formation* and on his own by the Windsores!
>1 AP, Coldeyes, form up columnward behind that rock wall east of you. I espy movement in the fields!
>1 AP As the Ambush begins, and Markhan spots movement in the grass. His eyes narrow as he squints into the wind trying to get a [Sense] of what else is out there. (3d6 vs Sense 10?)

Attempting to be frugal with his actions, that'll be it from Markhan during preparation.

>>6111163
No, damn it, no! Northwest... and west!... and south west! Movement in the fields, in the open and out of cover!
>>
>>6111240
I agree with Zivka*
>>
>>6111168
>AP3 Gear up (Boost kit, WispCloak and shield)
>AP1 Ironwrought Banners Shields up
>Move: to cover side of southern cliff

"Heads down shields up we have arrows flying!"

#Rion
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 9 Sense 11
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
BoostKit: Fuel 4/4 Speed 4
WispCloak: +1 Reaction
Bits of kibble: Animals like more
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Coinbits: 1
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Gearwright 12
#Close Quarters 13
#Pathfinding 10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Cold Winds 1: If start unengaged Add rank to speed. If engaged Bonus DMG to first attack hit.
!The Flow: When you Defend, you perform multiple Step-Dodges. When you attack, targets get -1 skill.
>>
>>6111176
"It occurs to me that our manners have failed us amidst all this excitement. I am Edward, these here are Scarlett and Zivka and I would introduce the rest of our illustrious company if I ever bothered to memorize their names. And what should we call you, fair lady?"

There is merit to your idea - no, not surrendering to brigands, finding out what they want. I can go back to the door and yell if anyone on their side wants to talk.

"And one last thing: any average Illiosi could get off two shots before the building was stormed, but I'm exceptional. I could get off THREE."
>>
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Commands go out, Rion prepares his shield. Wicklighter loosens the blade in its sheath and whispers a quiet quick offering to the distant instructors. One of the troopers glance at the Rikovian and shake his head. They're not used to that kind of thing. But all Blades know the battle is not the thing that decides. The decision was made in the tutelage of the master and the dilligence of the student, six months ago, on that morning when you decided to sleep or stand up and practice the cut that will save your life.

Markhan glances out over the marks - Reikan for field. Curious namesake, shifting lingustically across the mind like a mirage. There. There!! Low shapes, coming in at a crouch, careful, silent, weapons readied. They're disturbing the plants as they move, low and slow. Would have been hidden but for the lucky toss of the wind.

The Blue Rats form up. The Stern Ravens lock pikes and plug a gap, sure they've got this and deferring more precise instruction. Coldeyed archers check their quivers. Some of them whisper a few prayers, touch the coin shavings they prepared after seeing Luz do the same. It might not help. But any bit of stolen luck could decide who walks away. So why not try?

>... !
>>
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One of the troopers scans around - searching. Forms up with another and unfurl the Company banner . . .

>Bannerleaders (that's you!) may nominate one squad as Bannerbearers, bearing the Company standard.
>Bannerleaders my nominate one squad as Vanguard Breachers, who have lumbered along in heavier equipment and will now put their helmets on and secure their shields and strap their cuirass proper and get ready to throw down.
>>
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Arrows fall down like hail, clattering among the ranks. Shields up, the troopers wince and duck behind road barricades and old walls. Markhan thumps against an old building, scouting out over the fields - the shapes out there spot him and try to make a trophy out of the man but his heavy armor absorbs the lucky shot.

Ambuuushhh!!!
Hold steady!!

--

Though arrows fall among you like rain, no troopers are engaged in melee and-- Crows! CROWS! GET BACK IN FORMATION!! Dammit! They're such show offs!!

>The Trooper Formations have . . . pecularities which may trigger during certain situations or events and cause them to act up or do things.
>If you absolutely must make sure a Formation does not act out of order, it's a 3 AP major order to Enforce Discipline and then you add your Will to theirs when resisting their . . . more interesting impulses.

--

>COMPANY PHASE!
>THAT MEANS YOU LOT!

Remember that if you start out of melee engagement, you benefit from SPEED as well - you can move 1 tile for 1 speed.

The FIELDS don't look so overgrown. If you have less than 6 DR, they do not count as difficult terrain - unfortunately, our Breachers all have 6 DR, and so for THEM, the large fields are harder to stomp through; it's 2 AP per tile.
>>
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Recruits, you'll see a Compass to the top left of the map. The current standing order and environmental situation is also displayed there.

Placing yourself as the centrepoint, direction 1 is up and 3 is down. You can navigate using this compass. 33 is 2SE of you, but reading 33 33 is a fair bit easier than reading 4SE when processing bulk troop movements.

The environment factors heavily into this situation. The WIND AND WEATHER is indicated by the x/-y. Right now, the situation is such that every 3 tiles invokes a further -1 to ranged attacks or thrown things. It's low wind and good visibility. It may sometimes be worse, it may be sometimes be better.

It is the Third Descending Glory, one of the long hours before the sun dips out of the sky. When fighting intensely in hand to hand, troops tire faster during the height of day and they see poorly during the depth of night. Other kinds of weather have other effects. For now, your careful manevuring, resting, good march order, excellent timetable management skills and plentiful rest and refit have ensured that everyone is at good capacity with fine stamina and supplies. This may not last.
>>
>>6111437
>>6111351
>>6111240
The Woman rouses herself, turning in an agile movement and sweeping to her feet. And then she dips into a curtsy, tipping an imaginary hat.

" Mornlight. Montosi Mornlight, at your service, courier of a distant Senate and underpaid government employee of . . . "

She pauses for a moment. Thinking. A brief shadow passes across her eyes and she clearly decides on her next words with some care.

" Infrastructure support services? Bit of a shortstaff in the department, so I've been lent to the Kalcmiri Greenglass Council to help them with an overdue taxation issue related to some pecularities in local grain shipments. The fields here, they grow a kind of tobacco for export and consumption but there's been a few years of taxing it under label regulatory category Arken-Three, which by way of referencing the Luperni-Cesteriphon-Twin Shores International Shipping Agreements of '265 is ACTUALLY not the proper tax category for agricultural byproducts consumed for personal satisfaction."

She smiles. And then like an army marching on to a attack hillfort she keeps going.

" I was travelling through the region to conduct a growth survey and offer calculation services to the local villages to get their government rebate scheduling fixed, but I got jumped by those Windsworn two days ago and tied to a chair in the middle of this place. I mean I know no one likes a government employee but I'm not even from the tax office, I promise "

She grins, by way of apology. One of the troopers suppresses a yawn.

" Anyway, I won't bore you with grain economics. Pleasure to make your acquiantance, Magnates Edward, Scarlett and Zivka. You often get into daring firefights with roaming religiously motivated marauder factions? I wouldn't think that'd be your usual line of work "

Montosi bounces a little from foot to foot, shaking out the remaining jitters of days of deprivation. For someone who was left in the sun for hours, she's recovering fairly readily.

" I think your idea of negotiation is clever. These people must want something. I couldn't get them to talk at all. It's like they've taken a vow of silence or some such. But they're human? Surely they'll see you have that in common.

If nothing else, they might not batter down the doors if they're busy talking.

Ask them about their leader. I saw him. Briefly. When his goons were tying me to a chair. He had a lady with him, some slick Pytherii thing in full legion harness, which in THIS weather? Void, lady, calm down.

Think maybe they call him the Whispergrain? I'm not up to date on my bandit clans and maraudering criminals but when I was in Kalcmir down the coast, the Red Market called him the leader of the Windsworn. Didn't mention a lady though, which is why I think maybe that's a way to start - some leverage or something. Because he must be doing something for her, or she's doing something for him, and point is this lot will have orders, yeah, in some sense of the word? "
>>
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>>6110976
>>6111238
>>6110774
You pack up. You take care. You whisper a few prayers, sprinkle sprays of water. A large ward - modified grounding, too large really to be effective - is scribbled in the sand. It's the ritual of the thing, the careful observation of rote and duty. The world feels . . . more cohesive. The tension in the back of your skulls alleviate. Though also, simple distance will do that. Pack up and move, slow and sure. On the wind, noise drifts. Distorted. Screams? No. Just. .. . noise. Out here in the Leviathan Sea, the endless dunes do stretch on and at times it can be hard to know where sound comes from. Something gets warped on the way. What you hear close is happening far. Things you think are so different that they have no influence on your life inevitable turn out to matter far too close to where you are.

As Caedo, Luz and Icarus grounds everything proper and packs up the water barrels, some of the troopers groan and complain under the weight of the supply wagons. But that's a company for you. It moves at the speed of logistics. Luckily, you have people to handle all that and the packaging goes . . .

>+3

Without issue.

--

Phridon spends time elsewise, checking notes and referencing the few scant books in his pack. Blackstones. Blackstones. Blacked Stones? No, he's not interested in Reikan tourist traps or Uthani homecraft jewellery traditions. Blackstones.

They're uncommon - extraordinarily rare - Wrackstones and out of all the various types in their innumerable oddity that the Wastes spit outs, Blackstones have the distinction that they are above all else inert, dull, deadening things. So many Wrackstones are monuments to the excess of bad ideas. They want to be used. The Wastewalkers who acquire them and thrive with them grow to depend on them. Need them. Yearn to ply their talents as the Wrack holds their souls and humanity slips further past the threshold.

But Blackstones don't quite exert such a pull. Hold it to a fire and the fire lessens. Hold it to a river and the river gurgles and you can spot small bubbles as the water flows elsewhere (though the river persists). For a thing that absorbs so much without end it is a wonder it can be held in the human hand at all. Though this is a comforting lie. Blackstones are not so rare. The ones that don't kill you are.

( Phridon pauses here to recall an old lesson: If you see blackened sand on the wind - RUN )

But Icarus' one seem pristine and tuned right so that it does not absorb his life as well as all else. So, so far, so good. A slice of something that takes in other stuff at prodigious rate.

There are Free College experiments to determine how much, what boundary, what weight, but it varies per Blackstone and not any two are truly alike. Some take in more, some release less and many, as mentioned, cannot even be safely handled because whatever structure defines what they can readily devour is not tuned such that it filters out human life.
>>
>>6111492
But never in all the journals or references or books or scholarly letters is there mention of a Blackstone that has any colour. The hint remains in the name. The idea that one could shimmer with a faint hue seems to deny that moniker, an oddity.

Perhaps another thread. The Shimmering that Jove was exposed to, the crystalised specks of Wrack, places where the world has scabbed. The fields grow from enormous expenditure of Threshold energies, the Other peering in close. Perhaps if we had not warded, guarded and sanitized this site we left behind here, the world would eventually snap at the edge and the Wrackcrystals sprout. Material mundanity cannot bleed but if it could, the odd mutifaceted crystaline structures you find in the Wastes at times would perhaps be the lubrication of the fine structure of the universe, seeping in through the cracks in creation. It kills you. In untold ways. You are a machine entirely dependent on endless rules and systems and metabolic pathways and finnicky hormones and precise sodium balances and you are uniquely suited to the biosphere you roam within, a scrap of meat that thinks itself a blessed thing. When the rules that permit your existence begin to bend, you bend before you break, and the Shimmering fields of the Wastes are but one of the little signs of the Wrack.

Here, in the High Wastes, we are further in than many. Go further still and the Deep Wastes are profound oddities of geography. Shimmering fields that stretch like countries, stretches of sand that feel like graveyards and - if the whispered stories are to be believed - Wrackcrystal pillars that pierce the skies and holes in the world that things fall through. Though that's all hearsay. People who have actually braved the Deep Wastes are few and far inbetween. The area simply isn't hospitability to life as we concieve of it.

But for all that, the Other is a known quantity. The rainbow hued dots in the air, the ghostlight that curls around the crystals, the Shimmering it leaves - all that is Potential, before it crytalizes into Wrack, and so you curve back around, brushing up on basic theory.

Fireglass is Wrackcrystal formed -right-, a moment in time, a perfection of possibility. A fuel source, a boon, a trade good, the reason to brave this hostile place.

Wrackcrystal is the scars of creation healing itself.

So Jove was exposed to the Shimmer Fields and dying, his entire being twisting apart. Leeching that bound whorl of energy off of him into the Blackstone must then - logically, if such applies - have imbued the Blackstone with a purity of potential. It is, in a sense, almost become a fleck of Fireglass held in Icarus hand. But unlike fireglass, which is rigid and must be processed by alchemineers to unlock the potential within and serve as a base for the wonders of modern science, the Blackstone appears to have simply absorbed the potential. And it's holding it even now. Inert, somehow, not crystalised, not bending into Wrack.
>>
>>6111492
Ah, I do hate to be a stickler when it's to *my own detriment*, Command. But shouldn't I bet at -2 Reputation as well going from here? >>6111117
>>6111245
>>
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>>6111494
Not fading.

so the Blackstone - somehow - holds the essence of the Other, potential itself, and the world is not muting it. Icarus has a little bound and hidden away whiff of the stuff that dreams are made off.

It's been theorised, of course. There are supposed to be containment vessels, wards, rituals, incantations, prayers. But the issue has always been - will always be - that Potential must and can only imply coming certainity. After all, it's so trite as to be idiomatic: Potential unspent is potential wasted.

It will always fade quick, becoming whatever it was going to be, nudged along, frayed away by a world that is far too rigid for such free-floating flecks of nothing-and-everything. Fireglass is so valuable because of a variety of modern chemical engineering allows its use as a catalyst, accelerant, binding agent. The bound possibility is released into some refined work. Wrackcrystal is so enormously lethal because simply being near it will wrap you in the tapped and cracked something-else, bending you out of shape. Your very thoughts and sapience reverberating with the stuff to cause it to spiral out of control.

That's not happening here, because in the Blackstone, it seems it's not inunduated with the world. Or with Icarus' thoughts. Or Joves destiny.

Could probably power anything. In a sense, it is anything. Could probably sell it for a pretty coin to an alchemist.

Could siphon it out slow and you've got a multiplier for any invocation you care to attempt, because instead of drawing on the latent possibility of the world and hoping the Other draws close and you can force some slight deviation in path of things, well, you could just. . . Add your own Potential.

There is one other snippet of information, from some book or another that Phridon has read, though he can't recall quite where.

There's an (unconfirmed) theory that a Vanadian research group found a way to bind potential into people, to nudge past them the Threshold. Which would obviously destroy anyone; the mind unbound is friend to none. Theoretically though, if you could do that, and keep the subject alive, you'd have the prospect to make them . . . anything.

>>6111496
Don't worry. They'll have something else to complain about soon.
>>
>>6111492
>>6111494
>>6111499
Nonetheless, exciting academic theory about Improbable Biology aside, you do need to find out what you are going to *do* here, Banner-leaders.

You coul continue the rest of the patrol. There's a sizable unit with you. But perhaps it would be prudent to advance to the village and catch up with your Recon-Force. Perhaps it would be prudent to search the local area? Perhaps it would be prudent to take this chance to continue on to Rally Point Midnight or the Oasis.

There is noise drifting on the wind. The sound of . . . violence?

>Phridon, Caedo, Icarus, Luz and the Joves are still in March-camp. You can take an action in relation to the specialists or yourself, and it would be very prudent to decide on a march order.

As per >>6109537, it It looks like this:

>Navigate to Rallypoint Midnight Blue (Navigate 12, Logistics 12, I roll 6d6)
>I think the Reckless Ashfingers can take point, they're twitchy
>I'd like us to be defensive - can we get the spears on the perimeters and the archers bundled near the middle of the column?

Though do be aware a "march order" might also be "hunker down here" and you can technically instruct the troopers to perform various tasks. Though it's not like you need to build a road or dig a trench at the moment.
>>
>>6111480
"Oh no, please do continue Ms. Mornlight, grain economics is my idea of a good time. How do the logistics of maintaining Kalcmiri tax revenues work so far from the governing bodies? The presence of rebate scheduling implies a certain level of connectivity that by ordinary means shouldn't be possible for so remote and sparsely populated a region as this is. I've recently been reading through 'Volatile Volatiles Markets and You: Finding Consistency in Times of Strife' by Anthrew Carn Neggie, and he follows a philosophy of flexible investments capable of reallocation from points of failure into more promising ventures, achieved through a vigilant oversight of diversified assets financial, corporeal, philosophical, or otherwise. I'd be very curious to hear your process."
>>
Rolled 3, 2, 5, 1, 1, 3 = 15 (6d6)

<Childish Imagination: Fly high in the sky carried by the mercureal breeze
Executive Mechanics: I do not hold the Will of the Wind
Keeper of Secrets: The wind rides free, nearly unbridled by the will of wizards
Eager Reason: Stop this silliness. The wind carries wet iron and exited howling.
<Childish Imagination: Let the Siren Song pull me to the pool of blood. Something happened there.
Voice of Self Preservation: No, not that one either. You don't have the skill or understand how it works.
Cutting Determination: I will travel towards town and Analyze the situation as I go. I am the cutting edge, so I will lead.
Voice of Self Preservation: Shouldn't I let the Pathfinders lead the way?
Cutting Determination: We have none with us. I will blaze a path.
Eager Reason: Sounds fun, but we're not in a forest chief.

>>6111507
>Navigate to village to meet up with the rest of the group (Analysis 12, Influence 10)
>Take point. Take the Ravens, flanked by the Slicers split into two wings up front with me. The Powderheads near the front and slightly behind us. These squads seem suitably motivated to take point.
>I'd like to be enthusiasticly curious, looking for signs of interesting goings on or mysteries to solve.

#Luz
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Gauntlets
Thaumatergy Kit
Glistening Knife, +1 Sharp, Storage = S(12)
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Books
1 Coinbit, Clipped
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Iconotheurgy 12
#Wards 13 (base 10)
#Close Quarters 13
#Analysis 12
#Mistbreath 12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Edges and Insight 1
!Well Read
>>
Rolled 2, 4, 5 = 11 (3d6)

>>6111458
I'll nominates the Sharp Sharps as our Bannerbearers for this skirmish. They're in a good central location right now, easily within view of *most* of our units.

I'll also nominate the Ironwrought Banners as our Vanguard Breachers. They're closest to the village entrance, and we don't know what could come storming out of there.

>>6111470
>>6111473
Perhaps peeking out to gawk at whole unit of Windsworn wasn't the best for his health? Markhan thanks his lucky stars and ducks back into cover. A rock and a hard place, if he orders the Crows to halt, they risk getting picked apart by the archers right in front of them, if he orders them to attack and then halt, they risk over-extending. . . . He'll trust in Wicklighter's abilities to halt a possible flank. The crows have done a good job mopping the floor with the archers... for now.

#Markhan
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 13 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 1

–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9 Reputation -2
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6

–Kit
Breacher's Kit, 4DR, 2DR on Limbs
Shortblade, Sharp
Halberd, Two Handed, Sharp, Impales, Shatters
Shield [30 HP, 5 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt

-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 11
#Polearm 13
#Small Unit Tactics-12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Masks and Mettel 1: If you start *adjacent* to an ally, they add +1 to all skill-test and speed. Spend up to Rank AP on behalf of ally (caps per ally)
!Armored Advance: Intentionally body slam targets when entering their tile, deal 1d6+1 per straight line movement prior

>Using 1 Speed and 2 AP to move 4 33
>Use 3 AP to shout over the din at the Crows. Show some sodding discipline! Engage those archers to your front in good order, and then hold your position! We don't know what's beyond those rocks! [Will 10]
Finally, perhaps he can use some overconfidence to his advantage.
>Use 1 AP: Windswept Blades, form up! Those Windsworn to our northwest are exposed and alone, easy pickings!
...Windswept, Windsore, facing off against the Windsworn? Maybe we ought to rename a unit or two...
>>
Rolled 4, 3, 5, 6, 4, 2, 6, 1, 1 = 32 (9d6)

>>6111470
#Wicklighter
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 10 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Alchemineering Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Longblade - +1 damage, Sharp
1 Coinbit
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 9
#Filching 10
#Alchemineering 12
#CQC 12
#Blades 14
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: If unengaged, add rank to first skill test. If engaged, add rank to all Reaction tests
!Rikovan: Can spend Focus as I would Stamina, and always regain at least 1 Focus when I Recover

>2 Speed & 2 AP: Move 32 32
>3 AP: Charge (Move-And-Do Attack, Blades 10) against the southern wing of the Windsworn formation, letting the Windsore keep the northern wing occupied
>3 AP: Attack (Blades 14)
>1 AP: Pay attention to that clonking. Is that the sound of well-armoured enemies? (Sense 10)

I know you said we don't really have to, but I repost my sheet partly for my own reference as well.

>>6111458
I'll nominate the Sharp Sharps as Bannerbearers and the Ironwrought Banners as our Vanguard Breachers. The latter in part because it really just makes sense for anyone called Ironwrought to be in heavier armour.
>>
>>6111582
Traditional naming conventions around here is [Adjective][Animal].
>>
Rolled 5, 4, 5, 4, 2, 2 = 22 (6d6)

>>6111507
#Icarus
=Metrics=
Vitality 12 // Stamina 12 // Focus 12
Action 9 // Speed 2
=Stats=
Will 10 // Health 10 // Grit 10
Sense 10 // React 9
Lethality 1d6 // Threshold 1d6
=Kit=
-Equipment-
Weaver's Whip
=Secrets=
#Iconotheurgy12
#Analysis12
#Wards13 (Base 10)
#Rope13
=Traits=
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Edges and Insights 1

>Regroup with the rest of the company at the village (Analysis 12, Influence 10)
> No elaborate marching order. Just fold myself into the ranks of Luz's group.
> Scan the surrounding terrain for movement or signs of ambushes as we march.
>>
Rolled 2, 6, 4, 6, 2, 2 = 22 (6d6)

>>6111470
>AP1: Command Ironwroughts to advance towars the first archer squad.
>AP1 And keep the defensive stance
>Free action Fire of the Boost kit and move 44 44 (Fuel 3/4)
>AP1 Move 3 and take cover behind this thing
>AP 3: Try to Spot possible Traps or Ambushes (Sense 11)
>AP3: Refuel My boost kit (Gearwright 12)

"That's the spirit prepare we'll hit them hard but don't be reckless and let me check ahead for trouble first."
Said Rion as she dashed into next cover to check for traps or foes hidden.
>>
Rolled 4, 1, 5, 6, 4, 4 = 24 (6d6)

>>6111507
Interesting stuff. Especially that last bit about the (unconfirmed, of course) Vanadian experiments. Anyhow, there's a march to plan, you say?

>Navigate to the village. [Thoughts? 11, Logistics 12]
>Luz should take point, but unarmored pikemen, however determined, haven't the makings of a van, if you ask me. Same goes for the reckless slicers. Replace those with Haunted Sharpshooters and Bound Blades. They seem less likely to fall into an ambush. Guns and pikes should follow close behind, archers and the slicers in the middle, and with sluggish spears bringing up the rear.
>Join Icarus in watching for potential ambushes.
>>
>>6111480
"A pleasure as well, m'lady Mornlight.

You might be surprised by how often unruly, religiously motivated natives get into daring firefights with people like us. Not only is it not unexpected, but it is, in fact, our very line of work. Worry not. You have fallen into capable hands.

Now, if you will excuse me while you continue this fascinating conversation with Scarlett, I'm just going to..."

>Move back to the entrance and yell.

"HELLO. IS MR. WHISPERGRAIN LISTENING? I WOULD LIKE TO DISCUSS WITH YOUR LEADER."
>>
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The Company Banner is unfurled and raised as the Vanguard Breachers fix their helmets, slide down their visors and slide on their heavy gauntlets. Vision isn't much, but as far as protection goes, its second to none. And as Rion snaps for them to get stuck in, they start tramping down the road. A few desultory arrows ping off of the armor, but they lack the capability to penetrate. Simply light rain falling. Looks like this part of the field is completely handled.

Which is about when Rion spots the trap and things get a bit frantic, because though he shouts loudly, the Ironwrought lack the vision to see the problem and hear him over the din before they've advanced a little further than perhaps they ought to.

--

Markhan and Wicklighter rally the troopers around the banner, and as a surging flood, they perform a series of deft and quick counter-charges. Easiest way out of an ambush? It's simply to get the other side to realise they've made a mistake. The Resolute Crows brace their pikes and push two steps ahead, causing an entire section of windsworn skirmishers to flee heedlessly away. And then they form up their ranks (begrudgingly) and hold steady for further orders.

Wicklighter cuts down his opponent, scoring the first kill of the encounter. And then the Blue Rats follow up, disinclined to be shown off by another.

Over the engagement, Wicklighter scans - and Markhan sees them too; heavies. Windsworn marauders in . . . clanking formation. That's unusual - their whole creedo is speed and mobility. At first it seems a rough block of pikes are marching closer and we've suffered a flash Reikan invasion, but no, there is a logic to the madness.

Their armor is heavy around the gauntlets and they wear chainmail, which will stop projectiles, but they can still break off and move with fluidity if they're out of formation. Unlike the Resolute Crows, their uniforms aren't quite resilient enough for a stand out match. And those longspears must allow them to cliff-jump readily. Clever artifice, actually. Though it seems they've made up for lack of equipment resilience by simply bringing more manpower.

>... !!
>>
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The early Windsworn skirmishers fall back step by step - some faster than others. They were never meant to hold ground or fight us to a stand-still. Just quick fading attacks. But the clatter of arrows have done its duty, certainly - we're strung out along the road.

--

In the fields, knowing they can't flee from the blades, the Windsworn draw knives and sharps of their own but against troopers with armor and shield it's a patently unfair knife-fight.

--

Wicklighter sees - across a line of spears closing in - a man on a rock, high above, point his weapon at him. It chills the soul. Something in the gesture.

*Marked*

--

The Resolute Crows reform in excellent order and share a few shouts and cheers. How's that for first victory of the day? Worthy of the hat, yeah!

--

Rion watches a surge of surprise soldiers storm past towards the Ironwroughts, who haltingly form into a circle and place themselves back to back.

Two men leap across the old ruins, Rion rolls aside and as one attacker is about to skewer him a scraghound bounds out of the blue and tears into his leg!

--

>ORDER PHASE
>THAT MEANS YOU LOT !
>>
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>>6111901
>>6111530
Edward shouts. Nothing happens for a while. Scarlett gushes about government infrastructure support spending bills and Montosi, unaware she was going to have an excited audience, blinks and shakes her head and tries to keep up. Tax rebate scheduling in relation to smallholder farm agricultural yield is actually a fascinating area of government policy, because you have to apply a variable discount to variable harvest output. Not so little the smallholder pays nothing, not so much they cannot keep paying into the system. The distances out here and the fraught nature of their claim to the land makes the prospect a little more difficult as well, but that is actually why you have roaming government land inspectors and public infrastructure support specialists.

You see, by bi-annual assessment of land productivity you can tailor the implied tax bracket to the thing the land can support. But of course seeing like a state means that actual variance in agricultural commodity yields will at times be at odds with either the assessed due tax or the rebate - if the numbers are particularly bad one year, the governemnt of Kalcmir will be obliged to pay the peasants a stipend to make up for it. While intended to take the edge off the sharp knife of hunger this policy - a little more generous than the Pytherii or the Vanadian or Reikan or Illosi or any other such far flung realm - does lead to a particularly and peculiar interesting aspect of Kalcmiri interstate grain commerce taxation law, because naturally - naturally - where there exists the possibility of payment there will exist fraud. Is Scarlett familiar with future commodities exchange contracts? Ah, I see you are well-read, good, good, Montosi nods, the joy of it then is that in the Kalcmiri system they have derived of something to splendid as a futures agricultural inverse insurance contract, or, a contract taken out or a parce of land and a bet on the size of the tax rebate of that land for some future point on the presupposition that agricultural productivity would be so low that the Government steps in.

You see the issue, I hope, and Scarlett does though Martik is a bit lost and Edward is occupied and Zivka was thrown off a few sentences back. Right, naturally, while intended to be a benefit to the people, speculator investments in reduced agricultural products produce perverse incentives on a national-economic policy level, we hardly want the moral hazard of incentivizing lands that could be productive to lay barren while using their lower output to claim taxation benefits so if you're familiar with the bylaw regulatory procedings of the meeting of the Luperni-Cesteriphon agricultural concerns out of Pyther from sixteen years ago, you'll actually - ha ha ha - be aware of a funny story of that lot of wheat merchant-magnates investing in the idea of Kalcmiri underproduction then intentionally flooding the market with cheap seedstock, allowing farmers to experience a
>>
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boom planting cycle. A bountiful three years, and then, naturally the price of forward insurance payments on tax rebates were driven practically below ground so when the Luperni then snapped off hundreds of thousands of them on the regulated exchanges well who was to notice but *then* simultaneously they raised the price of their seedstock and fertilizer alchemineering by 0.02% per mass tonnage which had percolating knock-on effects on the international grain markets and made several Illosian investors quite rich but did cause a spate of suicides in the Reikans due to tremendous losses. But for the Kalcmiri smalholder they were paid quite well for the contracts? Though the lack of actual harvest yield that year then obliged the Kalcimiri government to pay several million coins to Pytherii-Vanadian merchant magnate speculators, a sort of blood-less international mugging on account of how there were still actually plenty of food to go around but the cost and open price for several exchanged notes went topsy-turvey and ANYWAY that's debt the Kalcmiri is still paying off since the Luperni-Cestipheron partnership obligingly converted the whole thing to a deferred loan - are you familiar with interest bearing bond mechanics as relates to cross-currency valuation exchange--

MERCIFULLY

At that point there's a knock on the door and a man in a mask and a swirling cloak points first at the three dead company supply clerks laid out in the streets, then at the gun still clenched in the hand of one.

He swipes his spear across it.
The musket snaps.

The end of *that* spear is . . . sharp.
>>
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The tense moment slinks on. A few dust-specks roam down the street. The masked Windsworn circles his spear around and holds it in a loose, readied position.

Edward wonders if he's fast enough. Montosi holds up a hand to break off the lecture on international commerce regulation. Zivka checks the back door, but no signs of any skullduggery.

The Whispergrain dips his head. He's a slim figure. The mask is . . . hard to place. A chitinous, layered thing, multicompound eyes, a black shell-like material that absorbs the light strangely. He says nothing. Offers a hand signal, a little rolling movement. Scarlett translates - picked it up on a book once, wind-tongue, basic gestures. Keeps the sand out of your mouth on a long walk - he's greeting an honored traveller who will soon experience great misfortune owing to the natural progression of events that he, himself, is helpless to forestall. He bears no ill will to our presence and will seek to scatter our ashes so they may live on the wind and roam free in ending. This is not personal.

All that from a gesture?
All that from a gesture.

And then - with a little cough - a woman steps gingerly over the three corpses. Scoffs in dismay. She has a sword strapped to her side, a weatherproof all-coat that looks more expensive than your combined wages and the mono-maniac hyperfocus in her eyes of a true believer.

" Ah. *Survivors*. Hardy lot, aren't you? I apologize for the threatrics " she means the three dead clerks and the broken gun and she says the words like it's an expense request she's had to acknowledge

" I tried to talk them down but the Windsworn like their drama.

I am disheartened to report to you that at this very moment your reinforcements have been irrevocably detained on the road outside this village, and will, as soon as the rest of my elements arrive, be dust.

I am not unneccessarily cruel. You may join them in surrender. Throw your weapons out the door, promise to do no further harm, and you will be processed as a prisoner of combat in accordance with every governing rule and my personal assurance you will come to no harm. "

The Whispergrain and his troops move a little. Just enough. Spears are suddenly more apparant, blades half drawn. The Operative sighs.

" Some harm. Maybe. The Windsworn have particular rituals. I am given to believe they let all captives knife-fight for their freedom. Which I will also respect, as they are my current local contractors "

The blades fade away again.

" Honestly, you people are in my way. I want one thing and one thing only:

I need a vanadian who calls herself Ink.
She's stolen a book from my employers and the library due date is *way past* and we absolutely, positively must have that tome returned. Your Company is unfortunate casualties of being in the way. That damnable woman has an absolutely unerring ability to mess things up royally.

If you have any messages for family, friends or officers, I will take them with me. "
>>
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" And further-- "

Montosi takes half a step past Edward, near the opening, voice raised in acrimony.

" YOU **TIED ME** TO A **CHAIR**!!! "

The operative blinks. Twice. And that's it, that's the full extent of her surprise.

" Didn't I do that two days ago? Madame, how are you alive "
" YOU ABSOLUTE PUFFED UP LEATHERCOAT "
" Now now we don't have to make this personal. I'm impressed by your resilence but the nature of the situation calls for some expediency and I was out of other options"

Montosi glares.
One of the troopers slinks a little further into cover.

" I was delivering a message! You can't just go tying up the messenger! "

The operative shrugs. It is not apologetic.

" Surely I can. I am the Rebus, so I will be the Hand. Your little sparkhearts never did know your place. Well, I'll extend the same offer to you that I did to your Illosi friend there and the gaggle half hiding in the house.

Surrender, knife-fight a Windsworn for your freedom, and be on your way. Frankly it seems better than the alternative of continuing to be an impediment to my time-table "

Montosi is so shocked she takes a half step back and twitches.

" TIMETABLE?! YOU SUNMAD STARGAZING VOIDCAT IN A SUIT *TIMETABLE* DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING-- "

" Quite. Now have some bread. You're clearly working too hard. "

Montosi doesn't even know what to say.
>Maybe you have a comment or a question or some insight or ...?
>>
>>6111959
(So, does our company actually know who Ink is? What is our mission here out in the desert? I think that would inform how we respond here.)
>>
Rolled 5, 4, 1, 4, 6, 5, 1, 3, 5, 5, 2, 4 = 45 (12d6)

>>6111927
Hold my wine and watch this. I think I saw grand Martinos pull something similar in the circuits - without a boostkit, of course.

>2SPD, move 1S, 1SW
>2Fuel, boost 8S
>1SP, walk 1S
>3AP+2fuel, Boost up the side of this cliff and UPPERCUT this DUNERUNNER with the momentum. Enhance my PUNCH with fuel. (Close Quarters 13, Malice and Mirth +1, Fuel Boost +4)
>6AP, grab this man and SUPLEX him off the cliff (Close Quarters 13)
>3SP, refuel (Gearwright 12)

#Facsimile
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 8/12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Boostkit, Fuel 0/4, Speed 4
Wispcloak, +1 reaction, major to hide in terrain/cover, move and do at half
Lucky Token
Legion Grain, 1AP to deform or major to shape something
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Empty Pockets
-Secrets
#Gearwright 12
#Filching 10
#Close Quarters 13
#Wrackstone 11
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: Add rank to first skill test if starting unengaged, add rank to reaction if ending engaged
!Sizable Gambling Debt
>>
>>6111976
Who?

Anyway, for someone so well read you don't seem to read the briefings. You know the company officers (that's also you, sometimes) actually spend quite a lot of time making sure all the envelopes are sealed and what have we?

Your job was to take a few troopers and go check out the nearby villages for sign of conlict and your missing supplies.

You've found a village, none of the supplies, three dead supply clerks here ( !!! ), four ones elsewhere ( !!!! ) and what seems to be a rather large force of people with swords and arrows who don't seem to shy about making you join those dead clerks you keep stumbling into.

You volunteered to go on these perimeter patrols, so the briefing was quite clear and the expectation is presumably that you round up those missing supplies and find as many of our lost various clerks and people as you can.

If you've somehow gotten so sunmad and half dehydrated you forgot the thing you yourself volunteered to go and do, then I don't think there's anything we can do for you, Recruit. Grab some water, take a breather, try to recover - the sun gets to everyone out here, and it's been rather an active day so far.
>>
>>6112016
I'm well aware that the objective of the patrol was to search for the missing logistics train, I was asking more what the entire Company was doing out in the middle of the desert in general, why we needed to have the logistics out here in the first place.

"We're out here to search for the missing supplies that we were using to keep ourselves supplied to be out here" doesn't quite answer my question.
>>
>>6112021
Seems a curious place to take a vacation but the Commander said that was the job and it was going to be done, so here we are, getting it done.

Don't look at me, I don't know what goes on inside his head - it's all steel and polished surfaces in there, I'm sure. I'd be afraid to ponder the wonderings of a high officer, they're apt to assign you specialist duty.

>>6108989
Maybe go ask Commander Isenfrii about that client of his? But he never really talks about what his long-term plan is, and she's been too twitchy to run her mouth.

Though I guess I might be too, at that, if spooky people with undefined accents knew me by name and thought cutting through a thousand armed soldiers a slight timetable impediment.
>>
>>6111959
"Unfortunately we have never heard of anyone that goes by the name 'Ink', nor of any contraband such a person might be carrying. We have no quarrel with you other than the unprovoked harassment of our men and stores. While we very much do not appreciate these actions, I see no reason for our peoples to be in conflict with each other. We do not harbor nor support any 'Ink', nor vie for whatever book they may have, and we are doing nothing to hinder your search for them other than defending ourselves from your aggression. I think we would all be better served in our lives and purposes letting each other go our own ways, no? You all can just stop attacking our supply trains and ambushing our men, and we can stop killing yours when you attempt such. Nobody needs to die or get hurt, and I don't think it's so outrageous that you would have a better time finding your quarry without also trying to hunt us down and bleeding out men while doing so. What do you say?"

(Correct the above to be !Well Mannered if any of it comes out not so)
>>
>>6111992
Daring dedication to the strikers art ! Marvelously measure of Mobility kit! Absolutely incredible effort!

Unfortunately, you contramand a direction order to READY YOUR KIT WITH 3 AP and though we can forgive that sort of thing, you then proceed to try to refuel your kit while in the middle of an active life-or-death fight with an armed assailant.
>>
>>6112047
It's simple, the man will simply be dead by the time that action comes around!

Being the consummate professional I am, I reckon that I simply won't begin the refueling process if (by some vile twist of fate) my adversary has not been adequately punched.
>>
>>6111927
...The van is in a right terrible spot, innit? Wickligher, I'm heading south, the Ironwrought are encircled and need a breakout! We get them out, we can circle around the spearmen coming up on Wick-y and take them from both angles.

#Markhan
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 13 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 1

–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9 Reputation -2
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6

–Kit
Breacher's Kit, 4DR, 2DR on Limbs
Shortblade, Sharp
Halberd, Two Handed, Sharp, Impales, Shatters
Shield [30 HP, 5 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt

-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 11
#Polearm 13
#Small Unit Tactics-12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Masks and Mettel 1: If you start *adjacent* to an ally, they add +1 to all skill-test and speed. Spend up to Rank AP on behalf of ally (caps per ally)
!Armored Advance: Intentionally body slam targets when entering their tile, deal 1d6+1 per straight line movement prior

>1 SPD Move 4, 2 AP, move 54
>3 AP Embed within the Sharp Sharps. "On me lads, let's give the Ironwrought some aid!
>1 AP. "Sharps! Move south and..."
>3 AP "CHARGE THE BASTARDS PINNING OUR LADS DOWN! NO QUARTER!" [!Armoredk Advance, if indeed traits apply to embedded units]
>>
>>6112069
Indeed it does, recruit. In fact, most of your non-peculiar, non-wrack traits - if you have them - do. Though the Troopers often don't do benefit the whole way and it might be correct to say they back you up as you do things. In this case, the Sharps will lock shields and give it a good wind-up for a proper slam.
>>
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Markhan rallies the standard and prepares for a rush, pounding forward with heavy steps - the Troopers raise their voices as they curve around and push, colliding with the back of the Windsworn formation. The beleaguered and encircled vanguard breachers holler and and the sight of the banner in the breeze makes them stand their ground - which is fortunate, because panic now would have been death from a thousand cuts.

>Markhan, add +1 Citation for Valour.
>They'll have a use. . . later.

But they remain firm, as blows rain down on shields and helmets and armor. The longspears close. Arrows thud into the ground. A proper melee - the light Windsworn elements don't have the endurance for this sort of fighting. The Windswept Blades proves it by routing an entire group of them into shattered remnants, fleeing for their lives. But don't underestimate the professional bandit, properly trained, a motivated fighter and a clever one too. The Eager Edges try to do the same, and do see of their enemy, but the moment the area is clear of allies the arrows come down and men shout and dive for cover. Wounded.

--

Facsimilie overclocks his mobility kit and spends the fuel in an adept, careful strike, but his opponent up on the cliff-face is wise to the trickery and rolls with the punches in a literal sense, and here, on the edge, held at by by skill and spear, the Striker is one who falters and takes a gruelling wound.

--

Somewhere else entirely, a formation of musket-wielding, tired marching men round a bit of road after a disagreement over directions and have time to look around to see that they've strung out their allies back down the miles, so they're arriving staggered

. . . and up ahead is not friendly territory. The road is chok full of armed fighters!! Are they attacking the village? Are they here to settle some curious local score??

>... !!!
>ORDER PHASE
>THAT MEANS YOU LOT

The Ward elements are here.
Lets find the Manual of Iconotheurgy, shall we?
>>
Here is the full manual of Iconotheurgy, as far as we know. It includes the Empyreal and Probos invocations, as you filched the attention of that curious dice-handler earlier and the Empyreal is always watching.

Try not to blow yourselves up, alright? It'd be a right waste of potential.
--

>>6112152
As the Company is now mostly reformed, you can take action as you would like to.

Any Bannerleaders currently engaged in HIGH STAKES NEGOTIATION (Edward, Scarlett, Zivka) may continue that and *also*, if desired, take control of and perform actions for a Formation not currently broken. Luckily, no one is broken!

Your formations generally have 6 AP and 3 Speed, so pick one and spend their AP, if you'd like to do so. Just be clear about who you're ordering about.

--
>>
>>6112152
#Icarus
=Metrics=
Vitality 12 // Stamina 12 // Focus 12
Action 9 // Speed 2
=Stats=
Will 10 // Health 10 // Grit 10
Sense 10 // React 9
Lethality 1d6 // Threshold 1d6
=Kit=
-Equipment-
Weaver's Whip
=Secrets=
#Iconotheurgy12
#Analysis12
#Wards13 (Base 10)
#Rope13
=Traits=
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Edges and Insights 1

> 2MP: Step [1]x2.
> 3AP: Icarus prepares a Major Ward, carving it into the ground of the tile he is occupying.
> 3AP: Icarus prepares a Major Ward, carving it into the ground of the tile [2]x1 of his position.
> 3AP: Icarus prepares a Major Ward, carving it into the ground of the tile [3]x1 of his position.

Luz, Phridon, Caedo.
I've established an network of stable wards.
Stand within to minimize risk while performing theurgy.
>>
Rolled 1, 6, 4, 1, 3, 1, 3, 4, 5 = 28 (9d6)

>>6112152
Hey, hey, what kind of sand-scurry scout moves like that? All your friends are down there fighting, but you are up here - what, hiding? That's weird, right? Right? You do seem like a flighty bastard, maybe just laying low on high? Hey, is it difficult dodging all these punches?

Sorry, I get chatty when I bleed!

>2SPD, circle 1S, 1SW - a little safer a little farther from the cliff edge
>3AP+3SP, deform the next thing I touch - him if I hit, his spear if I parry (Wrackstone 11, +3SP, -1pain)
>3AP+4SP, two punches (CQ 13, +4SP, -3multi, -1pain)
>3AP, defend
>0AP, trigger Malice and Mirth for +1 reaction

#Facsimile
-Metrics
Vitality 8/12 Stamina 4/12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Boostkit, Fuel 0/4, Speed 4
Wispcloak, +1 reaction, major to hide in terrain/cover, move and do at half
Lucky Token
Legion Grain, 1AP to deform or major to shape something
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Empty Pockets
-Secrets
#Gearwright 12
#Filching 10
#Close Quarters 13
#Wrackstone 11
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: Add rank to first skill test if starting unengaged, add rank to reaction if ending engaged
!Sizable Gambling Debt
>>
Rolled 3, 3, 6, 1, 5, 3 = 21 (6d6)

>3AP, Ready my kit for Thaumaturgical action:
-Right hand: Whitebone Needle
-Left hand: Glistening Knife,
>2 Speed - Move 5,5
>3AP - Embed with the Ashfingers
>3AP, 3SP - Link to the Ashfingers. It appears that Linking is not an Action, and I only roll if the targets are warded, which they are not.
>3SP, Iconotheurgy 12 - Shunt my Lethality to the Ashfingers. Temporary give up my killing power to enhance theirs. First set of dice, since this is an Action I assume that I need to roll a skill. 3 AP pushed T (1d6) lethality. I have 1d6 Lethality. I assume that I push it all and am temporarily non-capable of causing physical wounds? We'll see how it plays out, twisting the fabric of existence to make men better killer.
>3SP, Influence 10 - Coordinate the Ashfingers to fire on the Murmuration to our local SW. Aim small, miss small men. 2nd set of dice.
>>
Rolled 3, 3, 5, 1, 6, 4, 5, 5, 4 = 36 (9d6)

>>6112152
>AP3: Charge The blades at 44 going for the legs with kick. (Close Quarters 13)
>AP3: Throw the blades man at his buddy Boost the throw with Boost kit (Fuel 3/4) (Close Quarters 13 + 4)
>AP3: Boost kit Charge the Blades in 33 deliver kick to their sides (Fuel 2/4) (Close Quarters 13)

Time for Rion to try out her boosted moth-style see if these wind raiders can keep up. And also to make up for the scouting mess up but that's besides the point
>>
Rolled 3, 6, 4, 5, 2, 1, 1, 3, 1, 3, 1, 5 = 35 (12d6)

>>6112152
#Wicklighter
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 10/12 Focus 10/12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Alchemineering Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Longblade - +1 damage, Sharp
1 Coinbit
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 9
#Filching 10
#Alchemineering 12
#CQC 12
#Blades 14
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: If unengaged, add rank to first skill test. If engaged, add rank to all Reaction tests
!Rikovan: Can spend Focus as I would Stamina, and always regain at least 1 Focus when I Recover

>1 AP: "You want me, sandsoul? /Come and get me!/" (Influence 9 since I believe those Longspears do have me at ranged engagement)
>1 Speed: Move 1
>3 AP & 1 Focus: These spearmen can't even thrust a spear right! It's meant to be an easy weapon to learn! Their footing is all wrong! Grab a spear shaft with my free hand and thrust it back into its owner's chest, bowling over him and anyone behind him (CQC 13)
>3 AP & 1 Focus: Multi-task two attacks against the Murmuration (Blades 12 for both I think. Longblade, of course)
>1 AP: Crows, cover our backs! Just keep them at bay, don't you /dare/ try a charge!
>1 AP: Windswept Blades, hustle back this way! Get out of the open!

This is a /lot/ of people attacking us. They must really want this rusty Atlas. Well, they'll have to ask nicely.
>>
Rolled 2, 4, 6, 3, 3, 1 = 19 (6d6)

>>6112152
>Controlling Eager Edges
>3 AP: Scream an intimidating Warcry (Influence ?)
>Speed 3: Move 445
>3 AP: Strike the Windsworn (Blades-11, +1)
>>
Rolled 2, 6, 2, 5, 1, 1, 5, 2, 5 = 29 (9d6)

>>6112152
Wading into the melee, Markhan [Commits] himself fully to the fray, trusting solely instead in his armor and forgoing all proper defense in order to hack through these Windsworn.

#Markhan
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 13 Focus 12
Action 9(+3 [Committed]) Speed 1

–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9 Reputation -2
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6

–Kit
Breacher's Kit, 4DR, 2DR on Limbs
Shortblade, Sharp
Halberd, Two Handed, Sharp, Impales, Shatters
Shield [30 HP, 5 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
1 Citation for Valour

-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 11
#Polearm 13
#Small Unit Tactics-12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Masks and Mettel 1: If you start *adjacent* to an ally, they add +1 to all skill-test and speed. Spend up to Rank AP on behalf of ally (caps per ally)
!Armored Advance: Intentionally body slam targets when entering their tile, deal 1d6+1 per straight line movement prior

>3 AP: Markhan bellows a command to ironwrought before the frenzy of charging into a great melee overtakes him. "Shields up, you lot! Defend yourselves while the Sharps and I fish you out of there!"

>As for the rest of his 9 AP... well, what else is there than to attack, attack, attack! He's aiming to cut through the Windsworn to alleviate the pressure on the encircled, rather than carve the outside numbers away from them. [Polearms 13] +[Committed], I'm told that gives a slight boost
>>
Rolled 6, 4, 6, 2, 1, 5, 2, 1, 6, 4, 1, 3, 3, 4, 1, 5, 6, 1 = 61 (18d6)

Foinally. Need a scrap to take me mind off things...
>And we're at their back. Wonder where they're coming from.
If it ain't a warcry, stuff it. check y'pack for summa them grenades.
>Our pack, you mean.
No, Oi said yours.
>You have some cunning. I do forget.

>>6112152
>3ap Commit: Stratajove tries to anchor himself in Jove Prime's Thoughts. Perhaps a parallel consciousness may provide additional or improved Think actions. Splitting 11
>3ap Move-do 44 and look for additional Flashfires. Multiplicities 12, penalty halved
>2spd 1ap 1 fuel Move 544, boost up the cliff. Speed 12?
>3ap hide against white rock. React 12?
>1ap look eastward for enemies Sense 10
>1ap think about significance of all these big rocks with three little rocks next to them, like the ones 33333 of me. Thought 10

#Jove
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 8 Focus 10
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 8 Grit 8 Sense 10 Strength 11 Reputation 2
React 11+1
Lethality 1d6-2 Threshold 1d6+2
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Wispcloak, Major to hide, halved move-do penalty
Halberd
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
A coinbit
Multitool
2 Flashfire grenades
8 Luperni survival rations
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Gearwright 12
#Polearm 13
#Carousing 14
#Uncontrollable Splitting 11
-Traits
!Armored 1
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Hopes and Fears
!Multiplicities 2
!On Borrowed Time
>>
>>6111959
After they call Scarlett out on her lies and empty threats, I will apologize on her behalf (tense situation, she's not used to it, please understand). If it looks like they accept the apology and do not want to immediately storm our building, or if they happen to buy what she's selling, unlikely as it may seem, I will attempt to buy time and keep them talking by asking them questions. How can we trust them not to immediately slit our throats if we surrender? Why do we need to surrender first if we are to fight anyway? Would we be fighting the Whispergrain? What are the rules of this duel, can we pick another weapon? Does the Whispergrain speak? Could we perhaps come to an alternative arrangement? (Influence 10 + Fast Talk 2)

In the meantime, I'll try to estimate our chances if we go back in, let them charge our traps, I gas and smoke them and we run out the back. (Small Unit Tactics 11)

>>6112170
The spirit of Edward will compel the Windswept Blades from afar
>3 Speed, 3 AP: Move 445555
>3AP: Charge the windswordn archers to their south

#Edward
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
Morale +1
–Stat
Reputation -2
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Harquebus [4d6 Impact, Terror, Malfunction 16+, 3AP Reload, -1Acc per step, +1 Club in melee]
One Memento [Locket with her picture]
1 bit
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
+2 Fast Talk
#Alchemineering 12 [First Aid, Salt, Gas, Smoke, Fire, Oil, Salt, Acid, Stimulant, 1AP=1 point or huck 1d3 with major action]
#Muskets 13
#Small Unit Tactics 11
#Boating 12
#Sea Navigation 12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Masks and Mettle: If you start adjacent to an ally, they add +1 to all skill tests and speed. Spend 1 AP on behalf of ally
>>
>>6112152
(Pozting zheet once becauze Wardz changed from 12 to 13)
>3AP: Prepare/Ready Kit
>2MP: Move 5-4
>3AP: Order Reckless Ashfingers to fire a volley at those enemy pikemen. Our own will followup
>3AP: Order Stern Ravens to follow up on the Ashfingers with a pike charge


#Caedo
=Metrics=
Vitality 10/12 // Stamina 13 // Focus 13
Action 9 // Speed 2
=Stats=
Will 10 // Health 10 // Grit 10
Sense 10 // React 9
Reputation 1 // Authority 1
Lethality 1d6 // Threshold 1d6
=Kit=
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Weaver's Whip
Whitebone needle
1 Bit
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
=Secrets=
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Iconotheurgy 12
#Wards 13(10)
#Rope 14
#Small Unit Tactics 11
#Religious Ritual 11 (Pytherii)
=Traits=
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Masks and Mettle 1
!Well Read
=Bannermen and Support=
(x6) Blade-11 troopers
(x1) Young but well adjusted expert in Triage, Surgery and medical matters
>>
Rolled 1, 3, 2, 3, 4, 1, 3, 5, 2 = 24 (9d6)

>>6112152
>3AP: Ready my Thaumaturgy kit.
>1SPD: Step 6, onto Icarus' Major Ward.
>1AP: Link rock wall 333 22 to rock 3333.
>1AP: Link rock 3333 to big rock 33 222.
>1AP: Pause for a beat and think: is what I am about to do retarded? If so, I probably shouldn't do it. [Thoughts 11, !Well Read]
>3AP: Weave from rock wall to rock, making a wall to cut off a flanking route for the windsworn. [Iconotheurgy 12]
>3SP: Weave from rock to the big rock, extending the wall. [Iconotheurgy 12]

#Phridon
-
Vitality 12 Stamina 10/13 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
-
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 9 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
Reputation 2
-
Uniform, DR2
Shortblade, Sharp
Spear, Reach 2, Impales, Throwable
Shield [18HP, 3DR, +2Def]
Pockets with 2 entire coinbits!!!
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Whitebone Needles (Wards-13)
-
#Thoughts 11
#Influence 11
#Iconotheurgy 12
#Spears 14
#Religious Ritual 11
(#Wards 10)
-
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Hopes and Fears 1
!Well Read
>>
>>6112152
>3AP: Ready Kit
>MP: Move 554
>3AP: Coldeye Archer keep giving covering fire to the Eager Edges
>3AP: Whistle to the Eager Edges. "Shields up! Injured return to behind wall!"

#Crushfists
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 3
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Boostkit, Fuel 4/4, Speed 4
Wispcloak, +1 reaction, major to hide in terrain/cover, move and do at half
Better Pair of Boots
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Gearwright 12
#Closequarters 14 (Rikovol)
#Pathfinding 10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina and 1 focus (Rikovol)
!Of Cold Winds 1: Unengaged +speed. Engaged +dmg
>>
File: Windworne Skirmish 3.png (6.47 MB, 3008x7001)
6.47 MB
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Up on the cliffs, Fascimile fights for his life, adopting a flexible stance. He lashes out, but his opponent grew up with the spear. Was born to it. Probably stabbed his first enemy when he was younger than you'd believe. He flinches aside, parrying, rapping the sharp spear across Facsimilie's hand - a scoring blow against anyone not wearing company gauntlets and gear.

And then Facsimilie shifts his grip, just so, and wraps his hand around the spear-head and *pulls* and the whole artifice comes apart at the same, head sliding off, wood splintering. The Dunerunner yelps in surprise - first time he's made any noise - and rolls away from the lethal implements that is Fascimilie's hands. Then, thinking rather better of this fight, he swings down a hook-rope and dashes towards the village!

Facsimilie is left holding the heights, the victor, heaving and gasping for breath. Is this what victory feels like? The burning in your lungs?

--

Wicklighter would be able to tell, because Wicklighter steps under a longspear, shifts footing, and flicks a sharp edge acros a man's throat. He's dead before he touches the sand and then a shove-kick disrupts his allies and prevent them from spearing the cutter. The Blue Rats, seeing an opening, shift around and vault the rock to come down like a knife-hand.

The Resolute Crows (grumblingly) obliged and don't show their totally superior martial skill this time. They could have though. Instead they form up and block the Blue Rats flank and rear, defending them.

A Dunerunner slides off of a cliff and vaults another one, staring down at Wicklighter. Still *marked*. He will come for you.

--

In the fields, the Company Blades make an excellent showing of themselves though the wounded begin to peel off and fall back. Guided by the faintly remembered words of distant officers, they holler and charge and lay about - and Crushfist orders the Coldeyes to provide support. No more Windsworne here, than the few left standing.

--

Markhan shifts the grib on his halberd.
Markhan braces his feet.
Markhan starts swinging and people start falling - one - two - three - each blow shatters an arm, or breaks a leg or crushes a skull and the enormous halberd was made for this kind of violence, a heavy, brutal thing that weighs on your back for the all the long miles until it suddenly makes up for it with its staggering potential. The Standard doesn't waver once, and the Vanguard Breachers lock shields and for once in their service show they can be reliable as they begin a paced, careful extraction, guarding and linking up in front of Markhan, shielding him too.

And then, heavy visor makes it hard to see. Why aren't they coming? Why aren't they fighting -- they've broken away. Fallen back. A thin strip of land of the wounded seperate the two sides, awful terrain to fight in.

--

Elsewhere, shots ring out. Enormously, shatteringly loud, and then a braced pike formation follows up on that with a take-home charge. . .
>>
>>6112494
What are you talking about? I didn't threaten them with anything. I accurately described our current relationship of them attacking us and losing men doing so and us losing men and supplies to their attacks.
>>
>>6112549
In fact, I am trying to de-escalate the situation and negotiate some kind of peace. What on earth in my post could you construe as being a lie or a threat?
>>
>>6112545
Icarus sketches wards on the ground, careful, precise. Double-layered. Phridon nods and steps inside and cuts his needles through the air, poking. Something shifts. The world groans a little. Rubble cracks beneath his feet and the ward blows out in a surge of pressure.

But the world is . . . a little different. Rock flows like sandy water and mud, churning, stacking, cohering into a wall. It is not a grand artifice, 12 Rock distributed out to be about 3 per tile. But it will block any first-come attackers through that narrow channels, and be a hindrance for any fleet-footed strikers that would come pounding down our way.

Phridon wipes a bit of sweat from his brow. And that's it. It is always so recklessly easy to start. That's the trick of it, and why so many Iconotheurges and Animists never see their third decade - it's always easy . . . to start.

--

Speaking of fleet-footed strikers, the Joves climb a cliff-face and ponder an old fortress, long in grand standing. And out over the other way, look - a pack of ravenous Scraghounds, tied to posts, Windsworn moving among them. Must have impregnated their clothes and cloaks with repellants - must be why the hungry Scraghounds growl and tear at the ground but do not leap to lash. It's . . . A strange display. Unnerving. But surely, even if released, a feral pack of hounds would heedlessly run away from their tormentors and though they would bowl through us, they would not stand and fight like men.

What is the intention here? It would be frightening and strange for minutes but then they would bound around us and bound away, and the noise would clear and the shock would fade. This is a lot of effort to go through for a trick that works but once and is not guaranteed to ensure victory. What could they be planning?

Two Dunerunners move among them, pointing, hand-signing, directing. Whatever it is, it warrants the attention of their officers and commanders, then. Curious.

--

Markhan rattles another breath into heaving lungs and the Ironwrought square their shields.

A few arrows clattered down among you, but that is all.

They're braced for a charge. Defending. Holding. Some of them are helping wounded allies get up, and shuffling wounded away.

Perhaps there is some plan here, but perhaps Facsimilie pushing away their commander has caused them confusion? A few of them do glance towards the high cliffs, for guidance, but find none.

If we attack, we risk being overwhelmed again.
If we give ground, surely, they will follow. But at least the respite would be there.
But of course if we break them here . . . Well. Victory, then, surely?

>ORDER PHASE
>THAT MEANS YOU LOT
>WOAH WHAT-- YEAH, THE WINDSWORN DID THEIR TURN AFTER YOURS
>>
Rolled 3, 4, 3 = 10 (3d6)

>>6112554
#Icarus
=Metrics=
Vitality 12 // Stamina 12 // Focus 12
Action 9 // Speed 2
=Stats=
Will 10 // Health 10 // Grit 10
Sense 10 // React 9
Lethality 1d6 // Threshold 1d6
=Kit=
-Equipment-
Weaver's Whip
=Secrets=
#Iconotheurgy12
#Analysis12
#Wards13 (Base 10)
#Rope13
=Traits=
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Edges and Insights 1

> 1AP: Link to the ground @ [5]x1, [4]x3. (Shorthand denotation is 'Link1')
> 1AP: Link to the ground @ [4]x3. (Shorthand denotation is 'Link2')
> 1AP: Connect 'Link1' and 'Link2'.
> 3AP: Weave earth from 'Link1' to 'Link2' to create a bulge in the terrain which bridges the elevations at [4]x2 and [4]x4. (Iconotherugy12)
> 2MP+2SP: Move [4]x4, taking position against the wall of the ruin. Please spend extra SP to compensate if my prior action fails to make traversing the rockwall easier.
> 1AP: Link to the ground beneath my feet. (Shorthand denotation is 'Link3')
> 1AP: Connect 'Link1' and 'Link3'.
> 1AP: Pick up a flat shard of rubble from the nearby ruin and pocket it.
>>
>>6112545
I should have 2 flashfires from the pack I picked up.
>>
Animist, you can actually save yourself a minute of work if you direct-link between different things. You do not have to - there can be good utility in what you are doing. It's just subtle different utility.

> 1AP: Link to the ground @ [5]x1, [4]x3. (Shorthand denotation is 'Link1')
> 1AP: Link to the ground @ [4]x3. (Shorthand denotation is 'Link2')
> 1AP: Connect 'Link1' and 'Link2'.

Is a shade different than:

> 1AP: Link ground 5 444 to ground 444

This establishes a quick external link out there with one AP.

What you are doing is actually clever enough, but it usually serves a subtle different purpose - Your Link 1 and Link 2, before you connect them to each other, would both be linked to you. Because you are the centre point, you could link to something else, and then readily move something along - using you as a go-between. Seem complicated but animists like their complication.

You are probably quite aware of this, so Command presupposes that there's a trick here where you're building out a network. By doing Link1 then Link2 then tying Link 1 and Link 2 you are actually linked to 1 and 2 and then they're linked to each other - it's a triangle.

Useful trickery, for some things.

Just be aware that Links fade over time, so your method sometimes takes too long to form what you wish to form. No flaws for now, though.

>>6112588
Command doesn't see you READYING YOUR KIT FOR COMBAT so Command certainly isn't inclined to be very serious about WHAT IS IN YOUR POCKETS given that YOU ARE NOT DOING THAT YOURSELF, Recruit!

However, since you do point out the disrepancy we were waiting for you to point out we'll let you off with a warning this time.

And also inform you that if you are actually seriously intent on carrying that backpack into battle with you you're short a few details.

2 Flashfire grenades [Premium, roll +3d6 on use, >9 and they're Wracked too]
8 Luperni survival rations [Wracked]
1 Sideways Multitool [Premium, Wracked]
3 Coinbits

Your Empty Pocket are replaced with Slugfoot Backpack [Deep Pockets], which is relevant for shoving things in there.

Those rations and that multiool are a bit . . . curious. Seem edible enough if you soak them in some water first. The multitool has too many configurations.
>>
>>6112549
>>6112551
You tell them you don't know who Ink is (lie) and that they should stop attacking our supplies and we'll stop killing their men (threat)
>>
>>6112636
None of us know who Ink is >>6112016

Asking them to stop attacking us and we'll stop killing them is giving them a deal, because *that is what has been happening*. There's not even any need to threaten them, because we are already killing each other. I am proposing peace. Negotiating peace is not threatening war when war is happening. That's a little mad. **PLEASE** do not insinuate we know Ink, this will make this much harder than it needs to be, especially since we do NOT know who Ink is.
>>
File: Village Hours 19.png (278 KB, 1504x976)
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>>6112494
>>6112045
Scarlett tries a tactful reconciliation, though she can see the Windsworn shake their heads. It seems - to them - eminently unlikely that people working for a Company where this "Ink" their master wants has no heard of her at all.

The fact Scarlett hasn't interacted much with Commander Isenfrii's clients don't factor. Maybe the Windsworn do things differently.

The Operative shakes her head a little and holds up a single hand, inviting silence. Something about the gesture makes even Monotosi pipe down. The Windsworn look at her, glancing sideways, and a few of them shuffle a little away. All that from a gesture?

All that from a gesture.

" I agree with you, Miss, that it is unfortunate that you will have to suffer or die. I would have preferred a more slow and subtle series of activities but some things have a harsh time-table and virtue must die to expediency.

Your Commander and his clients meddle with things they do not understand - must not understand - and you, for all your professed innocence, will simply be caught up in the chaos. "

She lowers her hand again. The Windsworn don't look less nervous. As far as her statue goes she does not come across as particularly grand or imposing. Why do the people around her fear her so?

Edwards takes this opening chance to apologise for his associate and try to paper over the first cracks in diplomacy but he accidentally starts the sentence so boneheadingly wrong he ends up accusing her of lying to everyones collctive faces.

The Operative sighs.

" So, we are at an impasse. I have requested your surrender, and you seem disinclined to do so. You have one hour while my offer of consideration still stands and after that I can make no further recourse. "

The Whispergrain does not smile or say anything, but somehow, the feeling of a smile bears down. The expectation of something grand. He flicks his spear aroud loosely, just to prove he can. Seems the type to look forward to a short and brutal storming, a light spot of urban combat.

He fishes a knife from his clothes and underhands it near the door. It glitters in the sun. A sharp wicked little thing.

Montosi groans, visibly, and fires off some rapid-fire answers to Edwards questions.

You probably can trust them as much as you trust anyone to keep their word, they have a reputation and it's an honour matter. You surrender before you fight because otherwise they kill you. They're not going to stab you to death afterwards, but if you lose the Knifegame you're probably going to get treated as a servant and used to do menial tasks. Don't you have that where you're from? Ah probably not it's not exactly civilized behaviour, point is they -apparently- let captives fight for their freedom.

She doesn't know the rules of this duel, and the silent, staring Windsworn say not a word. Just eeriely glancing. Montosi ventures that it's probably not to the death and it likely involves knifes, she knows that much.
>>
>>6112636
> You tell them you don't know who Ink is (lie)
That's only true OOC.
Command made it pretty clear that Scarlett doesn't know much - if anything - about Ink's identity or intentions.
>>
Rolled 2, 6, 2, 4, 5, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 3 = 39 (12d6)

Whoops.

>>6112603
>3ap ready halberd and pack
>2spd move 44
>3ap Hide against wall. React 12
>1ap Move-do 4 and Peek into the old fort for signs of recent activity. Sense 10, penalty halved
>1ap Think about effect of wind on jumps. Thoughts 10
>1ap Stratajove ponders his prospects of securing a more real and stable existence. Splitting 11

#Jove
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 8 Focus 10
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 8 Grit 8 Sense 10 Strength 11 Reputation 2
React 11+1
Lethality 1d6-2 Threshold 1d6+2
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Boostkit 4/4
Wispcloak, Major to hide, halved move-do penalty
Halberd
4 knives
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Fuel Cell
2 Flashfire grenades [Premium, roll +3d6 on use, >9 and they're Wracked too]
8 Luperni survival rations [Wracked]
1 Sideways Multitool [Premium, Wracked]
3 Coinbits
8 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 10
#Influence 11
#Gearwright 12
#Polearm 13
#Carousing 14
#Uncontrollable Splitting 11
-Traits
!Armored 1
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Hopes and Fears
!Multiplicities 2
!On Borrowed Time
!Consummate Professional 1
>>
File: Village Hours 20.png (282 KB, 1500x972)
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>>6112650
The Whispergrain sweeps into a bow and leaves. He did not attend this short meeting to listen to the prattling of doomed men and women, and he wanders off with a flick of the hand to his people - who roll their shoulders a little and prepare their weapons. If there was something we could have done to convince him to treat us different is hard to determine. Diplomacy is always a give-and-take art, and men with weapons and you in an inferior position seldom negotiate entirely fairly. Perhaps it was always going to end. this way. Perhaps not. The Operative watches him head away warily. She's keeping one eye on a mad pet she doesn't quite trust not to get into trouble.

She tilts her heard a little and glances at the group. Montosi throws her a rude gesture. The Operative rolls her eyes. Montosi makes another rude gesture. The Operative sighs.

" That's hardly in keeping with your office. Can you at least surrender with some dignity? "

Montosi sticks out her tongue but one of the troopers nearby shove her with an elbow and she grunts and puts on a fairly diplomatic expression instead. Fine, fine, she can be polite. Probably no call to make this tense stand-off tenser than it needs to be.

The Operative offers a little gesture, a sort of "Oh, what can you do?" and a slight, tense smile.

" It's been a pleasure. If you'll excuse me, I have to go plan a kidnapping. Unfortunately for you, I can neither desist in my attacks nor take it on your word that you do not know anything about my quarry. "

She wanders off, unbothered by the corpses below her feet or the armed men at her back. Montosi watches her go. Scarlett smiles at the Windswonr guards. Zivka and Edward are a bit too occupied planning a break-out. Perhaps if they only came in through the front, the traps would slow them such that the group could dash out the back?

But they seem . . . competent. It's likely they'll do a two or three pronged strike. Through the roof, through the door, through the back door. Void take competent enemies, the dumb one are easier to fight.

Still, if they all charge into a smokey environment they might be confused and in the chaos, one could break away? It's not impossible, though the trick of it would take timing and tools.

--

Montosi quietly closes the door to the outside world again. Leans against it. Takes a swig of cactus juice. Offers a brittle smile.

" I really can't tell which is worse: The insistence on how right they are, or the smug arrogance of insisting they're the good guys. I loathe Theurgic Rebus agents.

Windsworns' alright though. Don't usually get so many of them in one place - they make this cactus-water soup with beetle meat that's to actually die for. It'll kill you if they prepare it wrong.

Oh, I just remembered another fact about their Knifegame - hah, sorry Edward, slipped my mind - we're not fighting them.

We're fighting each other. Whoever isn't cut by end gets to walk away with a waterskin and a map. "
>>
Rolled 2, 3, 1, 5, 1, 4, 4, 1, 6, 4, 2, 3 = 36 (12d6)

>>6112545
>3 AP, Iconotheurgy 12 - Form a powerful link with the Ashfinders. 1st set of rolls.
>3AP, Iconotheurgy 12 - Form an enduring link with Phridon. They seem to be doing good work. This will allow push and pull if they need help in the future. Let me know if you need to borrow my power at some point. You're my link to the coven, so try not to die. 2nd set of rolls.
>1AP - link to the feathers in the Ashfinger's caps.
>2AP, 1SP, Iconotheurgy 12, Weave - Temporarily make the equipment of the ashfingers light as a feather. Invoke Karathiel, who wanted higher. While Seralin is the Icon of gravity, they don't much pay attention to this world. Karathiel is the Icon of Wind, Freedom, and Flight. That should be appropriate to lighten our burdens, and I don't intend to crush anyone under stellar tyranny. I am a free wanderer, not a cosmic oppressor. I also don't want to hurt the Ashfingers by reducing the density of their bones or blood or something, so I'm Weaving into their equipment, not them. Ask the men to touch their muskets to their cap feathers as a sign of respect, and to help them participate in this ritual. Ultimately the goal is to help the squad move more quickly and freely without getting tired. Roam like the wind. 3rd set of rolls.
>1SP, Influence 10 - Advance and Reload. Have the Ashfingers reload their weapons and move 5 hexes SW (5,5,5,4,4). Should keep them from getting tired. If I stick with the squad I'll probably have some excess AP to share at some point. 4th set of rolls.
>>
File: Village Hours 21.png (421 KB, 1510x982)
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Montosi pokes the sharp end of the knife she picked off of the ground under her nails and cleans it a little. Silence follows.

" What? Something I said? "

--

The troopers put their heads together. Edward asks questions. Scarlett glances out the door - no - they're still out there. Zivka wracks their brains.

You're . . . *fairly sure* . . . the village looks like . . . this.

And you're *definitively* sure there's guards outside THAT door.

Perhaps you could lure them all in, and in the chaos, escape (but then, what will happen to the untouched feast table?). Perhaps you could throw something dangerous and explosive out, and flee in the chaos?
Perhaps the backdoor is less manned, and if you burst it open, you might take them by surprise?

Martik sighs and scratche at his beard. The mood's certainly taken a bit of a dampener. The troopers look ill at ease.

" I don't know about no knifegame. Those three clerks out there yeah? They were just dead. "

" Arrow wounds " another trooper pipes in. " Jacobil had his face all wrecked, but that's not from cuts. He got shot with an arrow, then they pulled it out. Shit, I liked that guy "

" Aye "

" I say we barricade the door. Flip this table, block the front, throw the cupboards too. Then we burst out the back. By the time they clear it or circle around, we'll either be dead or free. They can't have endless people.

And if they're hunting the whole Company, someone's gotta make it back and tell them!! They could be coming for them right now! You heard what she said! "

Montosi tests the edge the knife againt her palm. Looks at the heavy table. All the food on it. Glances down at the door. When she speaks, each sentence comes out slowly. She's not confident in that plan ,and she hates even mentioning it.

" He's not -wrong-. We could use the furniture to block the door. It'd surprise them. I think the reason they haven't stormed us yet is because they're worried about touching the plates and food. Disturb the guestfeast they've had the villagers prepare. But what if we're smart about it?

Take all the plates - the water jugs - all of it. Carefully. *Carefully*! Then put it in that alcove? If the table is clear of food, we can move it fine. The important part is the feasting, not the tablesetting. "

One of the troopers spits a curse and rounds on her.

" Yeah!! OR WE JUST MOVE THE FUCKING TABLE AND THROW THE PLATES OUT "

Montosi shrugs. Not much deterred.

" I figure we might need a little hospitality in an hour or two. They've invited Friends over, you see. Might be the shadows get a bit long "

" What in the VOID are you talking about? "

She doesn't elaborate.

--

>This situation *sucks*
>So now what?
>>
>>6112672
>Spend 2MP & 3SP to keep up with the Ashfingers.
>>
>>6112653
It's a damned darn shame to have to be hurt simply because other people have decided you know something you provably do not know.

Unfortunately, they didn't buy that we knew nothing. Almost seemed to be working there, for a moment too. Maybe that Operative doesn't know where Ink (or the Commander) is. It's likely . . .

Hm. Well. Thinking about it just now, if you were looking for information on people you had to kidnap, you might want to split off their forces first, reduce their guards and get as much information from the ones you could capture as you could.

This might not be an ambush. This might be a . . . Were they hunting us??? Try to avoid letting them capture anyone !! That might be what they're planning to do !!
>>
Rolled 6, 2, 5, 4, 5, 4 = 26 (6d6)

>>6112545
Hey, you run fast! A scurry-scout through and through, with a slinksoul at your core. I'm glad we're being honest with each other now. No more of this spearmaster facade - even if you were really good at pretending! It'd be strange to keep wearing that mask, right?

>2SPD, move 2S
>3AP, I owe you a gear check - sorry, sorry I get so caught up in things
>3AP, refuel (Gearwright 12, Go Slow)
>3AP, recover stamina (Health 10, Go Slow)

#Facsimile
-Metrics
Vitality 8/12 Stamina 4/12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Boostkit, Fuel 0/4, Speed 4
Wispcloak, +1 reaction, major to hide in terrain/cover, move and do at half
Lucky Token
Legion Grain, 1AP to deform or major to shape something
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Empty Pockets
-Secrets
#Gearwright 12
#Filching 10
#Close Quarters 13
#Wrackstone 11
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: Add rank to first skill test if starting unengaged, add rank to reaction if ending engaged
!Sizable Gambling Debt
>>
>>6112649
>>6112653
My apologies, I seem to have misread the situation a tiny bit.

>>6112679
"Well. That could have gone better. So we have an hour before we all die or worse, become manservants to the natives. A game of Whist to pass the time? No? We should come up with a plan to live instead? Oh, alright.

Our time horizon of an hour is a great thing! It means it is no longer our concern if the feast is ruined. If we die someone else will have to deal with it, if we live then either someone else will have to deal with it or we will have another hour to come up with a solution to that problem, and that's one more hour than we have if we do nothing.

My suggestion is that we make what preparations we can, then in about 42 minutes we move the table to barricade the entrance as fast as possible, ruining the feast in the process, and sally out the back while our superstitious enemies are trying to get in through the front. With surprise, superior skill and some acid grenades on our side we should be able to quickly overwhelm whoever is arrayed against us in that exit and make a run for it. With so much time, I can prepare some stimulants for all of us to give us that extra boost we need. The crash won't be pleasant, but that is another problem whose resolution can be postponed.

Any better ideas, ladies and gentlemen?"

>>6112545
The Stern Ravens get an intense feeling that if Edward was there, he would tell them to
>3AP: Catch their breath. (Recover stamina?)
>2 Move: Move 54
>3AP: Stab the Windsworn in the flank
>>
Rolled 5, 1, 2 = 8 (3d6)

>>6112554
Could really use those Coldeyes down here right about now. Routing one unit is good, but we're still outnumbered three to one here... Hey, can you lads even still fight in your condition?

#Markhan
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 13 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 1

–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9 Reputation -2
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6

–Kit
Breacher's Kit, 4DR, 2DR on Limbs
Shortblade, Sharp
Halberd, Two Handed, Sharp, Impales, Shatters
Shield [30 HP, 5 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
1 Citation for Valour

-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 11
#Polearm 13
#Small Unit Tactics-12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Masks and Mettel 1: If you start *adjacent* to an ally, they add +1 to all skill-test and speed. Spend up to Rank AP on behalf of ally (caps per ally)
!Armored Advance: Intentionally body slam targets when entering their tile, deal 1d6+1 per straight line movement prior

>1 AP, Markhan grabs a member of the Ironwrought by their shoulder. Asking them if they can still fight.
>1 AP, He'll also give the Ironwrought a once over, They're still in danger, so he can't be thorough, but a quick glance at the severity of their wounds [Sense 10]

...
>Markhan strokes his bushy beard
Hmmm, we should take the respite to regroup at a better position, methinks. Even with the best of the best of our column, 31 on 11 aren't odds I like to take in a straight fight, and we don't have a good way to tip the scales.

>3 AP Sharps, on me! Let's bring the banner up that plateau in the north. Plant the thing for anyone to see, and show them the company holds strong! (And to signal to any possible reinforcements that we are indeed embattled down here.)
>3 AP Ironwrought, the same order! We're regrouping on the heights!
>>
>>6112757
It sounds pretty good.

I can prepare special arrows, like smoke, fire of poison. What do you think would be wise?
>>
>>6112818
The locals have been good sports, let us not ruin their village's long term property values with fire. Smoke or poison should both work, though I have a slight preference to smoke for its ability to blind archers on rooftops if you only aim at their general vicinity.

Now, unless Scarlett or Lady Montosy object, we shall do what we must.

>Prepare and distribute acid grenades and stimulants for our sally. Officers and Lady Montosi first, if I can't make enough for everyone. (Alchemineering 12)

(Of Masks and Mettle bonus to the team while we prepare)
>>
>>6112818
>>6112830
I'm most cautious about ruining the feast. I don't think we should be the ones to do that. Maybe we could instead move the table and preparations carefully in front of one of the entrances, so that they would have to choose between overturning it and limiting their points of entry.
>>
>>6112835
Splendid idea. Although, it has a chance of of going wrong and spoiling the feast anyway, so we should begin moving it later, to give Zivka and I some time to peddle our crafts. Would you like to be the one to direct our men to do it?
>>
>>6112839
I don't mind as long as Montosi doesn't bring up something clearly wrong about the idea that would make it unwise.
>>
>>6112842
Montosi thinks this is as fine a plan as is likely to work. Perhaps distribute enough tools to throw them out the back door on the charge, confuse the guards there and run fast.

Block the proper front door with the table. Set the feast aside carefully. She has a knife now. Sharp and cold and balanced. A lot of problems in life get more managable when you have a knife.

She'll help move the tables and plates and bread and water most carefully to the front door. It is a good plan. It seems the Windsworn care much about causing calamity, and if they fear breaking in further due to upsetting the feast then *you* will have an easier time slinking out the back. Throw a cloud of smoke and acid and other horrors at anyone, and run, run, run. It may very well work.
>>
Rolled 3, 5, 6, 1, 2, 2 = 19 (6d6)

>>6112554
I see that the newly-arrived Fresheyed Archers are Tiring. Let's see if I can do something about that. Thanks for all the wards, Icarus.

>1SPD: Move 6 into warded hex.
>1AP: Link the formation of Fresheyed Archers with the ward 2 of me.
>3AP: Shunt the Tiredness from the Archers into the ward. [Iconotheurgy 12]
>3AP: Recover Stamina. [Health 10]
>1AP: Order the Archers to follow and support the Ashfingers.
>1SPD, 1AP: Move 55.

#Phridon
-
Vitality 12 Stamina 10/13 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
-
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 9 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
Reputation 2
-
Uniform, DR2
Shortblade, Sharp
Spear, Reach 2, Impales, Throwable
Shield [18HP, 3DR, +2Def]
Pockets with 2 entire coinbits!!!
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Whitebone Needles (Wards-13)
-
#Thoughts 11
#Influence 11
#Iconotheurgy 12
#Spears 14
#Religious Ritual 11
(#Wards 10)
-
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Hopes and Fears 1
!Well Read
!Threshold DR +1
>>
Rolled 5, 1, 6 = 12 (3d6)

>>6112554
>3MP: Move 555
>3AP: Move 544
>1AP: Link to rock @ 4555 (rock 1)
>1AP: Link to cliff wall @ 444 (wall 1)
>1AP: Link rock 1 to wall 1
>3AP: Weave from Wall 1 to Rock 1 to form a wall cutting off the Windzworn Pikemen and give them lezz zpace (zpearz are big!) [Iconotheurgy 12]
>>
>>6112679
Instruct the troopers and Montosi to *carefully* set aside the feast and barricade the front door with the table. Encourage everyone that we're going to make it out of this and to not give in to despair (!Of Hopes and Fears)
>>
Prepare a good supply of smoke arrows, and help Scarlett rally the troops.
>>
Rolled 2, 2, 3, 4, 1, 5, 1, 1, 2, 1, 3, 5 = 30 (12d6)

>>6112554
#Wicklighter
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 10/12 Focus 10/12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Alchemineering Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Longblade - +1 damage, Sharp
1 Coinbit
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 9
#Filching 10
#Alchemineering 12
#CQC 12
#Blades 14
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: If unengaged, add rank to first skill test. If engaged, add rank to all Reaction tests
!Rikovan: Can spend Focus as I would Stamina, and always regain at least 1 Focus when I Recover

>3 AP: Multi-task two attacks against the Murmuration (Blades 11 for both)
>3 AP: Multi-task throwing two Quickspark Pouches at the archers (Alchemineering 9 and 1d3 Fire for both)
>1 AP: Windsores, hop the rock wall and cover our rear!
>1 AP: Use Alchemineering Kit to drop 1 point of Smoke
>1 AP: Move 6 behind the low rock wall, with the Blue Rats coming with

The situation appears, in Wicklighter's eyes, to be deteriorating. Of course, actually /showing/ that is antithetical to his being and the way an officer should conduct himself. Time to reach into the bag of tricks.
>>
Rolled 1, 3 = 4 (2d3)

>>6113029
And the 2d3 Fire, in case that's a thing that I should be rolling

...You know, it's always concerning to see the dice come out in force for you. It only lasts so long.
>>
Rolled 4, 2, 6 = 12 (3d6)

>>6112554

>+Speed since unengaged (Of Cold Winds 1)
>3AP: Calm down the 2 wounded. Rationalize. "Calm down, it's not too bad. Right now, Wicklighter has a First Aid kit and Edward isn't here. Keep the bleeding away with pressure and stick to cover until you can be attended ok?." (Influence 10)
>3AP: Warn the Windsore Archers and Coldeyed archers. Enemies to our North beyond the field! Watch out stick to cover!
>3MP+1 from unengaged: Move 5-6-5-6 over the cover and behind the wall.
>3AP: Hide in cover

Sheet: 6112521
>>
File: Windworne Skirmish 4.png (5.22 MB, 3008x7001)
5.22 MB
5.22 MB PNG
Crushfists organises the wounded and they nod, focus restored and ready to get back into it - and seeing the Company Standard on the high ground, they know where they must go. Imagine that: The proud banner, in the breeze. A sight to restore your spirits.

--

Markhan regrets ever trying to run up a hill in full battle harness good VOID and the SWEAT and the burning in his lungs that was CHAOTIC but look - the Vanguard forms up around him, ready to hold the ground, and here, fighting enemies coming up at them, their spears will have an enormous advantage. The one confused Ironwrought he grabbed said they were fit for fight, and they're holding now. Sure. Heaving lungs and burning muscles. But they're holding.

But on the dusty ground back the way, a steel-skinned soldier lies. Didn't make it.

The Windsworn, much like the Company, uses this chance to re-organise. Some catch their breath. Some rally their shaken peers. Some adjust their weaponry. None fancy the sprint up the high hills into the waiting grasp of the Vanguard (or Markhan, with that halberd).

But they'll come. . .

--

Facsimilie rules the high heights and catches his breath. From this enormously advantageous elevated position, the landscape clears, the fog of war departs, and he can see the width and breath of many things (though not all, as some details are hard to make out).

--

Rion ducks, dodges and weaves, surprise-charged by a gaggle of sword-wielders.

--

Out in the fields, the scrap goes on. Probos smiles - it's a fair thing when both sides suffer curious calamity.

--

Speaking of calamity, the entire Windsore contigent would have been dead in the dust if not for Wicklighters shouted warning and their speed at diving into cover. Arrows rain down from on high, that first lethal volley of the aimed, prepared archer. The follow-ups will be lesser, now, because as they redraw, reload and tire, they won't also have so much time to find their marks. One of the Windsores plucks an arrowhead out of his uniform, grumbling.

--

Caedo tries some gentle nudging of the world, and though it does not form a stout wall, it does trip up a Windsworn and make their whole unit poorly footed. Seeing an opening, the Blades nearby dive in and the Ravens, guided by the faintly wind-whispered words of some distant officer, join them.

--

A stray gust of wind steals a lot of hats! What a crippling blow to morale! How will we ever recover??

--

Jove sweeps the inside of the little fort on the high hill and spots a score of small, carapace'd shapes, slumbering out of the sun. And a few sealed lockboxes, recently arrived. Must be a smuggler using this to store their gear, or the villager may be making some extra coin on the side.

But the guardians might wake up if we try it. They must have moved in after the packages were delivered. Relatively simple to chase off, they hate fire and smoke, but that takes twenty men and a bonfire and Jove is but... slightly more than one?

Hey who's THAT guy??
>>
>>6113220
Wicklighter orders an orderly reforming back behind the proper barricades and old stone walls, and smoke blocks the sight of the Windsworn. For good measure, he throws a few flasks of flashfire out and away, but he can't see what happens when they -- BOOM - what?

Sometimes, the volatile alchemical stuff develops an opinion of its own. That particular payload looked like it had gone a little Wrack'd, developed extra strength. A bloom of heat rolls back down the way, and *this time* a Windsworn screams out before he goes quiet.

--

Down in the distant village, Fascimilie spots a small command station and the Dunerunner he fought, sprinting to relay a report to his higher officers. A man in a mask looks down at a tableau of sand, as men in well-cared gear push small coloured stones around.

Add a few tents and some flapping banners and you could recognize the sight of a command station in any modern nation. These marauders are quite organised. Strange folk. If they're so adapt at tactics and the chain of command, why ply their trade fighting random dust wars in the middle of nowhere? Shouldn't they have taken over a city or ten by now?

--

>ORDER PHASE
>THAT MEANS YOU LOT
>>
File: Village Hours 21.png (330 KB, 1500x978)
330 KB
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>>6112974
>>6112943
>>6112830
Lift with your legs, not with your back, yeah? Montosi - looking more focused than one would think the task calls for, carefully moves plates of bread and roots away from the table. It's rather like watching someone disarm a powder-charge. When the last plate finally slides safely unto the rock it is meant to rest on, she lets out a visible little sigh relief. Careful, with hand signals to avoid alerting any listeners, the table is moved to the front of the door. A few chairs stacked on it. There. Try breaching in through that.

Edward checks his kit and mixes a few fuzzy chemicals. Just barely enough to give everyone at least one charge.

>Edward's kit is out of ACID
>Montosi, Scarlett, Edward, Zivka, Martik, Frasc and Lisp gain 1 Scarflask [2d3]
>You throw it from your belt with a major action and then bad things happen to who it hits.

Scarlett walks the rounds, ensuring everyone has enough water. That they're ready. Agreed to the plan. The troopers morale is flagging a bit, but a few whispered words ensures people don't (yet) give up entirely.

>Trooper morale recovered, they're back to Shaken as opposed to actively breaking down.

Zivka wraps careful threads around an arrowhead. With enough time to work it carefully and the extra alchemical supplies from Edward, it's easier artifice than usually. Martik and Montosi helping as well makes the whole thing go fast, though Martik is not so adept with the chemicals and burns his hands. He keeps in the shout, though, not wanting to give the game away. For a land tax assessor, Montosi has a deft understanding of payload charge wiring and she produces four arrows in the times it takes Zivka and Martik to make three.

>Zivka adds Smokequiver [1d3 Smoke]. Reload from that and the arrow doubles all range penalties (it's heavier) but impacts in a burst of smoke. Eventually, you run out.

She gives a glance and a smile.

" Hey, I've always been good with my hands "

--

Outside, the wind howls. There's a few brief thumps on the roof hatch, once again. Straining at the edge of hearing, Scarlett and Zivka counts steps and coughs and what sounds like movement.

Nine guards in front of the door, in their barrel fortress.

At least . . . At least three out the back, simply watching.

That's alright. You can surely overpower three.

--
>... ?

If you intend to Set A Plan In Motion, spend AP as standard - you have 9, and the long hours of rest have recovered your composure enough that Stamina and Focus should both be full.

If you want to keep waiting it out, take a standard downtime "general" action like you've been doing.
>>
Rolled 5, 6, 4, 5, 1, 4 = 25 (6d6)

>>6113221
#Icarus
=Metrics=
Vitality 12 // Stamina 10/12 // Focus 12
Action 9 // Speed 2
=Stats=
Will 10 // Health 10 // Grit 10
Sense 10 // React 9
Lethality 1d6 // Threshold 1d6
=Kit=
-Equipment-
Weaver's Whip
=Secrets=
#Iconotheurgy12
#Analysis12
#Wards13 (Base 10)
#Rope13
=Traits=
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Edges and Insights 1
!Threshold DR 1

Hm. Since I've networked these links together I wonder if I could...
> 6AP: Weave the earth from both 'Link1' and 'Link2' into 'Link3', such that Icarus ascends to the roof of the ruins upon a sturdy column of rock and packed earth. (Iconography12)
> 3AP: Icarus' eyes scans the ruin's rooftop is long slow sweeps - first pass checks for threats, the second ascertains if the structure is safe to stand upon, and the final sweep pans past the lip of the roof to judge how much of the surrounding landscape can be clearly viewed from this vantage point. (Sense10)
>2MP+2SP: If it is reasonable to do so, climb onto the ruin's roof and cautiously step towards [4]x4. If the ruin's roof is perilously unstable, or non-existent, Icarus refrains from stepping off of the earthen pillar.
>>
>>6113220
First Time Weaver applies to Caedo and Icarus, for both failing to blow themselves up.

( Sorry, there should have been a line connecting them to the info, but it appears to have disappeared )
>>
#Luz
12/12 Vit, 7/12 SP; 12/12 Resolve, 0/1 Insight
>1AP - Sheath glistening knife
>1AP - catch the hat blowing by my head
>2MP, 2AP - move 4,4,4,4
>3AP, Analyze 12 - Analyze the Dunrunner's commands to figure out what what their signals mean. 1st set of dice.
>1AP, Rep +1, Influence 10 (not rolled) - Order the Ashlanders to take cover with me and catch their breath since we're going to need to sprint south to catch up with the main forces. Pick off their elevated commander if the Dunerunner leaves cover. I trust in your twitch reflexes men.
>1AP, 2SP, Iconotheurgy 12 - Weave my !Through Clenched Teeth into the Ashfingers to help them recover. Invoke Karathiel, who wanted higher. Seems like the correct icon to help us catch our wind. 2nd set of dice.

Notice a chest through the cracks in the tower wall and realize that if I was tied to the earth I could probably have the earth push that chest through the wall and into the Dunerunner, but it would be tricky and I've just called upon the Wind.

There's a wrack field to our NE, so if we see the banners flutter to the SW all of a sudden we're going to want to seek shelter from the changing of the wrack wind. Which means that either the field is new or the locals have some means of protecting themselves from the wind.
>>
Rolled 1, 3, 5, 2, 1, 3 = 15 (6d6)

>>6113270
>>
>>6113272
>>6113270
Compass minded, Luz. Good insight. Judging from Jove's desscription of the fields and the fact they pulled him in when he went a-roving, they have to have been here for a while. Growing. A larger field. It wasn't here weeks ago when we trekked out, but these things do change around.

The large cliffs surrounding the village will act as windbreaks. Blowing in like a bad dream, any Wrackdust in the storms is likely to be much reduced in energy when it settles into the soil here. Inside, in house and village, the door and the windows could also close and keep out the worst of it. Likely, the locals have water supplies, a few prayers and hope that any storm will be none too bad.
The distances are still so long that we do not risk much - and the village doesn't risk much either. That they can grow crops from such soil is proof that it's not yet sufficiently Wracked to be odd.

Still, it is true that a large enough sandstorm would bring with it strangeness. Closer to the fields, vastly more strange.

Could this be part of the Windsworn... plan? They could trap us in the dust. But blowouts are hard to predict. The storms are not simple phenomena, that is why so many villages and stations ply a trade in weatherlogging and guiding. It would take tremendous insight to time and harness a storm, for ill purpose. It seems unlikely that they plan on this.

But you are ultimately correct. If the wind and weather changes, we would find ourselves in a large amount of dust-blown trouble.
>>
>>6113224
Did we hear any gunfire or fighting from outside?
>>
Rolled 1, 5, 2, 4, 4, 3 = 19 (6d6)

>>6113220
A moment's rest, good. We're uphill and upwind of arrow fire, should make it pretty hard for those Windsworn to hit us, unless they got into point blank range. Rubs me the wrong way to have to run from Rion and Fac down there though... You sand chewing cowards! Where's your fire? You seemed so determined to kill us a moment ago!

#Markhan
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 11 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 1

–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9 Reputation -2
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6

–Kit
Breacher's Kit, 4DR, 2DR on Limbs
Shortblade, Sharp
Halberd, Two Handed, Sharp, Impales, Shatters
Shield [30 HP, 5 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
1 Citation for Valour

-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 11
#Polearm 13
#Small Unit Tactics-12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Masks and Mettel 1: If you start *adjacent* to an ally, they add +1 to all skill-test and speed. Spend up to Rank AP on behalf of ally (caps per ally)
!Armored Advance: Intentionally body slam targets when entering their tile, deal 1d6+1 per straight line movement prior

>1 AP, Markhan looks to his rear, is the high ground facing the Resolute Crows any steeper or less so than the nearer side? 'If needed, I *could* charge the flank of those Murmurations. The Crows are my lads after all.'
>3 AP: Digging around in his pack, Markhan produces a bandage. He'll use one on one of the more wounded Ironwrought. If he were very charitable, he'd use both... but he thinks saving one for himself might be best, given the likelihood of him being wounded today. [vs. Thoughts? That's kinda the best I can come up with to roll against for some battlefield first aid]
>3 AP: Rally those on the heights with a few inspiring words, with a man down and many wounded, it seems like they'll need it
>1 AP: Frustrated, Markhan throws a loose stone and jeers at the windsworn below them
>>
>>6113303
>3 AP: Rally those on the heights with a few inspiring words, with a man down and many wounded, it seems like they'll need it. *[vs Influence]*

Is what I meant to write.
>>
>>6113224
Do we want to break out now? I can prepare a round of stimulants next, but I'm running out of ideas on what else we can do to prepare and I'm not sure how much time we have before things get worse out there.
>>
>>6113292
It's pretty quiet out there. Maybe a few muffled movements? Some barrels being rolled over?
>>
Rolled 1, 4, 3, 2, 1, 4, 5, 1, 2 = 23 (9d6)

>>6113220
Dune skulkers, and so many - like dust in the wind or sand in my socks, they are a force beyond number! Even so, I can't imagine our steelhearts will be keen on abandoning the high ground...

But what good is a score of archers against the FINEST pugilism to ever grace these sands?

>3AP, destabilize the rock face to my NE, engineer a collapse onto the Windsworn below (Wrackstone 11, Malice +1)
>3AP, refuel (Go slow, Gearwright 12)
>1Fuel, boost 4S onto the roof
>2SPD+1STA, move 2SE, 1NE
>3AP, Wispcloak to conceal myself in these bushes (Sense 10? I don't think I have an appropriate stat)

#Facsimile
-Metrics
Vitality 11/12 Stamina 7/12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Boostkit, Fuel 0/4, Speed 4
Wispcloak, +1 reaction, major to hide in terrain/cover, move and do at half
Lucky Token
Legion Grain, 1AP to deform or major to shape something
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Empty Pockets
-Secrets
#Gearwright 12
#Filching 10
#Close Quarters 13
#Wrackstone 11
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: Add rank to first skill test if starting unengaged, add rank to reaction if ending engaged
!Sizable Gambling Debt
>>
Rolled 5, 4, 5, 3, 4, 4, 1, 4, 5 = 35 (9d6)

>>6113395
There's no roll involved in trying to hide, you don't need an attribute for it. If hidden, someone else is struggling to find you and take penalties and difficultes to their Sense to do so. If you're in cover, behind things, out of sight or near terrain features, they take additional penalties to spotting you - which layers up quick and reduces their Sense towards noticing your presence rapidly. For instance, on top of the roof, people would be rolling against Sense 4 effective, with a -6 penalty and assuming Sense 10, to spot you if you were hidden and they had no idea you were there. Since they do not know if someone is there the odds of them doing this is low, of course.

Though do be aware that you are in no way whatsoever at all hidden even a little bit, recruit?
I'm not sure you could, in fact, be more obvious at all.

First you caused an avalanche - it's very loud.
The Dunerunner has been pointing and at you as he moved away - and everyone in the village area saw him slide down the rope after a dramatic fistfight on top of the cliffs.
You are framed against the sky, in full view of a few hundred eyeballs.
The mobility kit is not loud, but it is also not silent, and streaking out like a rocket across ground with no distractions does generally speaking mean that people see you. Then you land, loudly, on the roof, by multiple fully functional human beings who see you streak across the gap between the cliffs and the building. Also, you can hear them below - they are in the building. Then you moved a little further south-east, and you have now spotted more Windsworn which were previously hidden below the house. They are looking at up you. Some of them are pointing and slamming their weapons on the ground to make noise and point out your location.
The Scraghounds with them have started barking. The Dunerunner Command Staff, having just recieved a report that a man in a mobility kit pushed one of them off of the cliff is all turning towards the cliffs and they are all looking at you. The one who you fought has been given a new spear. The Whispergrain tilts his head a little.

There's a woman with them, wearing a rigid uniform and she appears to have acquired a longarm of some descriptio-- Oh you need to duck.
>>
Rolled 4, 4, 5, 3 = 16 (4d6)

>>6113410
I think she hit you in the arm. Better luck ducking next time, recruit, that 14 did you no favours.

That'll be 4d6 damage, but not to worry, if you take more than 7 in total your right arm will simply be disabled by the gunshot and you can likely clamp your left hand around the screaming pain that has become your existence. Well.

This is why the uniform is padded. Surely it will take the shot? It does have 2 DR, it's quite helpful.
>>
>>6113414
>>6113410
. . . We have a man down in the village and he has been captured by the Windsworn in the building and further, I think the troops they have in reserve are unlikely to wait around for whichever plan they have now that they are being actively attacked by incoming assialants.

This situation has rapidly destabilised and the half a hundred or so Windsworn now being urged forward to take the cliffs will likely be in a enormously superior position after they do so.

We should consider a retreat - if we can - back up the road and away from this situation.
>>
>>6113410
That's the trouble with Z-layers, innit? I'd have figured myself out of view once I'm on the house. Yeah, they hear me but then I'm a lovely bush or cardboard box - spend some time walking up, searching, and PUNCH.

It's fine, these things work themselves out.
>>
Rolled 2, 4, 1, 4, 1, 5 = 17 (6d6)

Well, wake 'em up, if you fink you're so real.

>1ap Stratajove, toss a rock at the northern group of broodlings. Just them, mind. We'll try to lead 'em to some poor bastard.
>3ap Hide, staying low and quiet
>2 spd 1ap move 222
>2ap would the scent of blood overcome the influence of scraghound repellant? Thoughts 10+1
>2ap if I jump 3333 using Fuel, what effect will current wind have on the jump? Thoughts 10+1
>>
Rolled 2, 6, 6 = 14 (3d6)

>>6113220
>AP3 Disengage to 6
>AP1 Take some kibble from my pocket
>AP1 Send the Hound back towards the shed (Base animal handling + kibble)
>AP3 Climb the cliff

"Woah that was too close for comfort. Nice job bailing me out before puppy but you should head back a little you won't be beating these with sheer mean spirit. Go now."
>>
>>6113415
Well that puts a real damper on my plans to hold the heights eh?
>>
>>6113366
We can prepare smoke? Zinka has smoke arrows, but maybe we can get some smoke grenades too?
>>
Rolled 2, 3, 3, 5, 3, 5 = 21 (6d6)

>>6113220
>Gained Trait added to zheet
>3AP: Fresheyed Archers and Haunted Sharpshooters: Approach to a optimal range, take aim and fire upon the enemy archers. Suppress them for our melee units to close the distance Volley 1, Volley 2, Volley 1 then Volley 2. (Small Unit Tactics 11 + Authority 1?)
>!Of Masks and Mettle 1 use 1ap on Ally behalf for the Archers to take aim
>2MP: Move 4-5
>5AP: Slick Slicers, Keep shields up focus on advancing with your shields block for your life and that of the Pikemen with you. Stern ravens follow along with the Slick slicers they protect you whilst you get in range for the poke. I'll tug down the wall to make it eazier. That's the signal to advance. I call this one Legio- I mean COMPANY Advance! (Small Unit Tactics-11 + Authority 1 + 2 ap, lets make it happen)
>1AP: Tug decrease the height of the wall I have created


#Caedo
=Metrics=
Vitality 10/12 // Stamina 13 // Focus 13
Action 9 // Speed 2
=Stats=
Will 10 // Health 10 // Grit 10
Sense 10 // React 9
Reputation 1 // Authority 1
Lethality 1d6 // Threshold 1d6
=Kit=
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Weaver's Whip
Whitebone needle
1 Bit
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
=Secrets=
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Iconotheurgy 12
#Wards 13(10)
#Rope 14
#Small Unit Tactics 11
#Religious Ritual 11 (Pytherii)
=Traits=
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Masks and Mettle 1
!Well Read
!Threshold DR 1
=Bannermen and Support=
(x6) Blade-11 troopers
(x1) Young but well adjusted expert in Triage, Surgery and medical matters
>>
>>6113632
We also might not have time to. Not sure if we should go or not.
>>
I’m ready to break out.

Charge out the side entrance, fire a smoke arrow into the mob waiting at the door, grab the mule with *all of our coin*, hustle west, go the way around.

I think most of the people in our way would have already moved towards the fight. We can take the long way around.

Or we could head down, then double back, even?
>>
Rolled 4, 4, 5, 4, 3, 6 = 26 (6d6)

>>6113221
#Wicklighter
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 11/12 Focus 10/12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Alchemineering Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Longblade - +1 damage, Sharp
1 Coinbit
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 9
#Filching 10
#Alchemineering 12
#CQC 12
#Blades 14
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: If unengaged, add rank to first skill test. If engaged, add rank to all Reaction tests
!Rikovan: Can spend Focus as I would Stamina, and always regain at least 1 Focus when I Recover

>3 AP: Disengage from the Blue Rats
>1 AP: Blue Rats, hold the wall!
>2 Speed: Move 56
>3 AP: Rally the Windsores (Influence 9+1)
>2 AP & 1 Focus: Recover to patch up the injured Windsores (Alchemineering 12, I think I also regain a Stamina and a Focus?)

Unaware of the wasp nest that's just been startled, Wicklighter is consumed by efforts to hold together this little triangle of men in the pass, slipping from the Blue Rats towards the Windsores and setting to work on getting them back into the fight. "Stand tall, steelsouls!" he urges them, "You see our banner up there? It's you standing between it and those bastard sons of the sand! Keep them back!"
>>
>>6113675
Montosi looks a little confused.

If you’re going to charge ahead to the west and fight that big barricade, why did she spend nervous effort shifting this table? It won’t do much good to stop anyone if we’re to rush that way. Surely the Windsworn will stop battering at the door and engage us if we attack them or if we circle around to that side.

She likes mules but is it so important?

Yeah it has eight months pay in the saddlebags

It’s got WHAT?!?!?
>>
>>6113587
A superior position is never in wain! It may be that things are not quite so dire. Luckily the Windsworn for all their prowess do not communicate telepathically and are but mortal. Fascimilie’s sacrificial jump may have brought more time.
>>
>>6113714
It’s a clever trap. I say

If we can convince them to smash in through the front, we can go out the back or side and around while they’re distracted with the trip wires and the horror of disrupting hospitality. Then, we can shoot the one guy on that roof up there, grab the mule, and run west around a corner.

It seems as good a plan as any. Who would expect us to double around?
>>
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>>6113724
Montosi stares at you, not entirely sure you are not making some sort of very advanced Uthani joke that she does not comprehend. Eventually she tries to ask what you expect to have happen when you run up the wide street the archers are all covering - you say you'll hit them with a smoke arrow! - Montosi says, yes, but she did see at least three, maybe five, and she's not entirely sure the multitude of people banging on the door will be so hyperfocused on doing so that they won't notice seven people running right past them.

It does not take eight men to break down a door. In fact, we can probably expect a good amount of them to be standing around, likely in the middle of the road you intend to burst past. Then you acquire this mule - WHY DOES IT HAVE EIGHT MONTHS PAY - and then you have to lead a mule - famously very slow creatures - out through a city while being hunted by people who are now all converging on your location because by your smoke, noise and attacks you have caused them to raise an alarm. They will know precisely where we are because it's been hours and surely the Whispergrain has explained to his force that he has a sizable contigent of enemies locked inside a village house?

If we double around we get shot to death about six steps off of the street but you are certainly welcome to *try* this plan, Montosi nods, because it may very well be a wonderfully good distraction for her sprinting very far in the opposite direction of your insanity.

( She seems a little stressed. It probably won't be as bad as that )
>>
>>6113221
>2SPD, 5AP: Move 555 5554.
>4AP: Engrave a Major Ward in my hex.
>>
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The Eager Edges report & Windswept Blades report victory in the farming fields. They've seen off the last Windsworn and secured the area. They're moving towards the banner at speed.

--

Facsimilie bursts out over the rock and soars through the air to land with a graceful roll on the building below. As he kips up and moves to the side, something slams into him - in a curl smoke, far away, an Operative gives a little grin. Was she... aiming for the arm? Icons, it hurts. Feet pound up the stairs as Facsimilie clenches his teeth and stems the bleeding. Being shot is never fun. But this look like a survivable wound. Played merry hell with his plans to hide though.

Throwing up the hatch to the roof, a man throws a knife at his feet. Huh.

--

Markhan rallies everyone around the standard and the troopers there stand tall amidst a rain of arrows and incoming spears, the medium shields and good positioning contriving to keep the worst of all the horror at bay. Being on ELEVATED POSITIONS - As Icarus can be sure of now, thinking about it, provides a few subtle boons, though they won't turn the tide of a significant conflict.

The troopers take heart and cheer as Markhan belts out a few inspiring words. They cheer louder when by sheer accident he contrives to clonk a Windsworn on the head with a rock.

--

The Blue Rats lock shields and hold steady, and from beyond the smoke, suddenly, screams from the burning. Well, don't look a gift horse in the mouth - they exploit the distraction to take down one of their attackers. Wicklighter, patching up a bowman, gives him a check. They're good to go on, which they do - returning arrows with remarkable precision. Though most thud into the cover across the distant fields a seeking volley of arrows strike out. The Coldeyes. They'v taken the time to aim and breathe and steady themselves and that attack is telling. Wounded archers begin dribbling away from the hostile Windsworn.

--

The western advance comes to a screeching, screaming, tumulteous halt as the Iconotheurges among us finally - finally - reveal that they have absolutely not one single shred of respect for dignity, humanity, limits or other peoples sense of integrity. Rather than be blown apart in some twisted nightmare ritual that combines Weaving personal attributes *with* an Invocation - literally heresy - the troopers scream, dive for cover or turn on Luz, beating him to the ground and disarming him of his needle. He could resist, but he has offloaded most of his strength and fierceness to the people around him.

The Icons, grand and high, consider such enormous hubris to be amusing. Imagine that: A little mortal speck that thinks to twist his own capabilties and then intermingle them with an Icon's strange strength. Bemused, delighted, and attentive to the world, Karathiel's shadow passes briefly over the area in a gust of intense wind.

--

>... Respone Phase, hold a little.
>>
File: Windworne Skirmish 6.jpg (3.71 MB, 3008x7001)
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Without Facsimilie holding the high ground the fog of warclouds drift back in (And besides, he's a little occupied at present).

--

A Dunerunner, seeing his chance, steps lithely forward, jumps off of the raised cliffs and lands, swinging his deadly spear at Caedo and the gaggle of troopers struggling with Luz. They yelp and dive away, throwing up shield and blocks, a little out of it due to the recent surge of adrenaline.

That spear has reach two, so be aware you are ENGAGED and have no SPEED until that man is gone.

--

Jove ponders the wind. Did it just pick up, briefly, in a surge? It feels that way. But perhaps it is not yet so dangerous that it would interfere with things. It is also lessening already. It was just a brief gust from some distant place, hovering through.

--

There are many things an Animistic Iconotheurge is recommended not to do. It is dangerous to Invoke without a Ward. It is dangerous to attempt to Invoke while doing other things. It is dangerous to attempt to bind invocations inside living creatures, for the Icons surely have very little considerations for the limits of flesh and bone. It is dangerous to attempt to weave your personal qualities out large, glittering strands of thought-stuff and intentions all wrapped and mangled by minds not yours. Perhaps it does not take. Perhaps it takes differently than you intended. It is dangerous to attempt to Invoke while Weaving, if one is not very careful in how one tries to cajole the strange forces called upon. It is enormously difficult to split out bits of soul-stuff across multiple vessels, as each little part of one self is subsumed into the whole. It is dangerous to mix intentions. It is dangerous to try to alter minds without careful grounding and warding. It is dangerous to bind errant gusts of free wind and force them into the lungs, causing enormous overpressure events that rupture organs. It is dangerous in the utmost ludicrous extreme to call upon freedom and soaring and try to stuff it in a box. It is dangerous to speak prayers to distant things without knowing what their curious domains are. It is dangerous to mix Iconographic attention with living things unless they're both warded and the attention is very, very carefully handled. And a hundred other smaller dangers.

That you are not dead, Iconotheurge Luz, is a marvel.

Next time some Iconotheurge tries to bend their souls, the troopers are going to shoot you in the back of the head instead of disarming you. They didn't sign up to be test subjects for horrorific violation of orders large and small.

Start with something that doesn't flinch in fear when you bind things you barely comprehend into their mortal flesh.

Perhaps a rat?
Perhaps a rock.

--

Markhan, up top on the high hill, spots a rustle shiver move through the ranks of the Windsworn. Though some are engaged, the attacks seem . . . perfunctory. They're fighting but they are conserving their strength.
>>
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The grand sun is slinking slowly across the high heavens. It is the Fifth Descending Glory, that longest hour before the final dip into twilight and the gradual enchroachment of shade and shadow.

In 4 turns (including this one, so 3 past this one) it will be Dustdusk, and the sun will begin to fade into the night.

Surely the Windsworn cannot keep fighting this late - they lack the battle planning. At least the Company gets a little training in lantern use and torch-light.
>>
Curious. The Windsworn glance at the setting sun. Some of their back-liners open space a little. Some of them do not push forward.

Markhan doesn't quite have the tactical read of the situation yet, and no one is there to analyse curious insight.

But . . . this is a stalemate. It may very well be the Windsworn would rather withdraw than fight us through the night!!

>ORDER PHASE
>THAT MEANS YOU LOT!
>>
>>6113737
Well

Alright, fine.

What if we take an even longer way around?

Go east until we hit the trees. Dash across the street, through the alley, back around west, approach the mule from the *other side* of the alley.

We don’t even need the mule! Just the saddlebags, because Edward took off with *months* of company pay and it won’t take the bandits to kill is if he loses it!

And then we head south do west or wherever.
>>
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" Hey " Montosi whispers, from the other end of the small building. She has the shutters of the back-window open a small smidge and she's peering out intently.

" I think the guards back here were recalled somewhere else. That gun. That's a rifled longrifle. Precision firing thing. Sounds like the Aikinom armory standard mark and make, so I'd hedge my bets that's the Operative firing at something. We might be in luck, maybe their Feast-friends came here hostile? Or they drew in something they weren't expecting "

Montosi flashed a sudden smile at Zivka, nodding.
>>6113792
" Could work. Bound east as if we're fleeing, but then dip into another home? Is that what you're thinking? Any chasers would pound sand after us, and we double around and grab that mule. If we lay down some smoke and confusion, I think that might work.

I don't mind a scrap but I mind assaulting a barricade head on after moving a table. Your plan there is... solid. We might lose them in the trees"

She glances back out the shutter

" I think I see some of them, far up ahead. But it could be bushes. Are we doing this, or do you have a better plan? "
>>
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>>6113395
>>6113414
Uniform took the worst of it - the bullet punched in through the crenelations of the stone roof and out the other side before hitting you. Much of its energy was already spent, but what a shot.

Your arm feels as if you can just barely, with a itch of pain, use it. You test your balance. Something about all this feels horrendously like all your gambling debts being called all at once, the universe reaching out to balance the scales. Maybe, somewhere, Probos is smiling. If an Icon can smile.

The Windsworn around you step back once and form a rough half circle. You can hear light feet, running. Seems someone in their rank has first call on the knifegame, tough you may not wish to still be here when he arrives for a rematch.

Then again. Old Company talk. Maybe the Windsworn are honourable enough. Could be they actually let you walk if you knife one of their people. Though then you might have to walk out through half a hundred of them.

Difficult for the mobility kit to push you back up the cliff-way. Might take more Fuel than you have. Not impossible, but up and across is a bad angle. Still, might be better than knifefighting people who think of cutting into their captives as a fun hobby.
>>
Rolled 5, 5, 1, 4, 1, 5, 3, 5, 6, 4, 5, 1, 6, 3, 6 = 60 (15d6)

>>6113791
>3AP+2SP: "Everybody, calm down and fall in!" Attempt to bring order to chaos. [Influence 11, Reputation 2]
>1AP: I aim to make a Link with the Dustrunner.
>1AP+3SP: Link to the Dustrunner [Iconotheurgy 12]
>1AP: Recall and perform the appropriate ritual for invoking the Empyreal Eye [Religious Ritual 11, !Well Read?]
>3AP+3SP: Invoke the Empyreal Sun: Smite my foe with fire. [Iconotheurgy 12]


#Phridon
-
Vitality 12 Stamina 5/13 Focus 9/12
Action 9 Speed 2
-
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 9 Sense 10
React 9
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
Reputation 2
-
Uniform, DR2
Shortblade, Sharp
Spear, Reach 2, Impales, Throwable
Shield [18HP, 3DR, +2Def]
Pockets with 2 entire coinbits!!!
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Whitebone Needles (Wards-13)
-
#Thoughts 11
#Influence 11
#Iconotheurgy 12
#Spears 14
#Religious Ritual 11
(#Wards 10)
-
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Hopes and Fears 1
!Well Read
!Threshold DR +1
>>
>>6113794
I’m ready, too
>>
Rolled 4, 6, 5, 2, 2, 1, 4, 2, 3 = 29 (9d6)

>>6113791
#Wicklighter
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 10/12 Focus 10/12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Alchemineering Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Longblade - +1 damage, Sharp
1 Coinbit
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 9
#Filching 10
#Alchemineering 12
#CQC 12
#Blades 14
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: If unengaged, add rank to first skill test. If engaged, add rank to all Reaction tests
!Rikovan: Can spend Focus as I would Stamina, and always regain at least 1 Focus when I Recover

>3 AP: Aim (Do not under any circumstances hit the Resolute Crows with what I am about to do, also preferably land it near the back of the Murmurations to crowd them in)
>3 AP: Throw a Quickspark Pouch over the Resolute Crows' heads into the Murmurations (Alchemineering 12 + 1 + 1 = 14)
>1 AP: Windsores, run round the rock formation to the right of the Crows so you can shoot into the Windsworn's sides!
>2 Speed: Move 22
>2 AP & 1 Stamina: Multi-task two attacks against the Windsworn (Blades 11 for both)

This is in hand. This is still in hand. This is fine. The situation is stable. Events elsewhere will tip the scales. Just keep fighting.
>>
Rolled 1 (1d3)

>>6113822
And the 1d3. Mm, I reckon this is going to be a 3. Let's be optimistic.
>>
Rolled 2, 1, 4, 2, 4, 3 = 16 (6d6)

*Hup-nyergh*

Roight, you lot. Drop y'weapons, drop y'cloaks, 'ead off to the sands, an' this one gets to follow you. Keep y'knoives. I ain't a monster.

Don't come back 'til you eat this. Oi suggest you wash it first.

>>6113788
>1ap Stratajove, once Oi arrive, stand outta sight and lettem see y'cloak blow around the corner. Threat o' the unknown, see?
>2spd 2Fuel Move 33 2323 Jump 2323
>1ap Drop Halberd for knife
>6ap Commit to grappling windsworn 3, flipping his cloak over his head, slamming him to the rock 4 of me, putting knife to neck. Strength 11+3
>3ap Issue the threat above. Influence 11+2
>1ap toss out a survival ration as part of terms
>>
>>6113270
we should rectify a grave injustice. No, it's not the bandage they stuffed in your mouth to prevent you speaking words that would flense their souls.

As a Mistbreather, you can use the Secrets of the world in a more hands-on manner. There isn't a lot of water around here (except inside people).

Your Mistbreath skill is 12, which also means it's +2 when you base it off of Will, Grit, Sense. It's 11 if you base it off of React. This is a bit tricky to remember, but just keep in mind; you can use it in a "refined" way if you base it off of a different stat than it's usual.

When you cajole water, out and about, you generally move and get equal to Threshold, 1d6, which is not much - but the trick of it is that Resonant Elementalists, such as yourself, usually use Grant and Shape to influence larger amounts of the substance, binding it to a purpose.

Unless you go about emptying people's waterskins, you may need to acquire water somehow - all the Windsworn are made of it, principally, as are most of the humans around you, and you can always gather humidity to yourself as a Major action.

These trick are like Iconotheurgy, but comes from a more primal place. You need never really "link" to a source of water when using Mistbreathing, because in a sense Mistbreathing is always linked to water (and only water).

This does not mean one cannot conjoin Iconotheurgy and Mistbreathing, though one seldom *needs* to; a Mistbreather can Tug and Shunt water or aspects there-of readily.

The important and most vital distinction is that Iconotheurges deal with ineffable qualities of the object, the soul and the core. A Resonant Elementalist deals with quantities of stuff. When an Iconotheurge shunts the fluidity of water into rocks and they melt, he's doing a funny prank on physics. When a Mistbreather shunts water from A to B, they're *moving the actual water*, spinning it with great force.

This is an important thing to keep in mind, because it means that when you imbue water into things, you wrap water around them or with them, benefitting them in some water (More absorption, cooling, temporary Vitality, shielding) but you can also inconvenience them (drowning, cooling, crushing). But while an Animist Iconotheurge could embed the fluidity of water in a rock or turn armor flowing and melted, using Mistbreathing you always move quantities of water.

Of course, you're both. So.

Manipulation is a storied, sacred possibility - Mistbreaths can ask water to turn to ice, or blow into steam with a word. An Iconotheurge would have to shunt the temperature of the water elsewhere, but someone with Mistbreath simply asks.

Because you are apt to try, we should inform you that asking the water inside someone to come over to you going to inflict damage = threshold and give you water to spend for other things.

Because you are going to wonder, no, Mistbreathing cannot mindcontrol people by controlling the water inside them to force them to do certain actions.
>>
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>>6113791
#Icarus
=Metrics=
Vitality 12 // Stamina 8/12 // Focus 12
Action 9 // Speed 2
=Stats=
Will 10 // Health 10 // Grit 10
Sense 10 // React 9
Lethality 1d6 // Threshold 1d6
=Kit=
-Equipment-
Weaver's Whip
=Secrets=
#Iconotheurgy12
#Analysis12
#Wards13 (Base 10)
#Rope13
=Traits=
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Edges and Insights 1
!Threshold DR 1

Icarus recalls reading a paper on the theoretical applications of layline tension.
Long a point of vexation for students of the Arts, the transmission of any medium via wards exerts a myriad of invisible pressures upon the meshwork. Overtime, or if forced to endure extreme loads, these pressures can induce cracks and fissures in the material which the wards are engraved onto potentially threatening to compromise the entire network.
This paper posited, that these by-products of wardcraft could be harvested and put to productive work - via an array of modifications ward composition, and copious layers of heavy-duty insulative warding. The practical example provided - and centerpiece of their study - was a flameless furnace. Supposedly, a choir of theurgical scholars had managed to continuously channel the surrounding atmosphere into their experimental meshwork pattern, harnessing and redirecting the accumulated invocational pressures built-up within the mesh to compress the air into 0.5x0.5 meter space around a loaded crucible. Compressing a greater and greater quantity of air down until it began to shine with a reflection of the Empyrean's brilliance and melt the ore that had been loaded into the crucible.
Only 5 individuals had reportedly died in the ensuing resonance cascade, with most fatalities being undergrad assistants standing outside of the choir's protective wards.
Now that's all well and good - assuming the findings aren't fraudulent - through it does make Icarus wonder.
Could the same principle be applied to a immaterial medium - like a concept or a condition?

>2MP: Step [3]x1, [5]x1. Icarus slowly clambers up the chunk of crumbling masonry to access the higher section of the roof.
>1SP: Step [4]x1. Tentatively Icarus eases his way further onto the roof.
>3AP: Icarus inscribes a Major Ward onto the stonework of the tile which he is standing on. The spiraling hexanodal design paired one-way correlation bypasses is optimized for one-way transmission of immaterial qualities into a vessel with the recursive insulation rerouting cumulative channeling pressures inwards concentrating the channeled qualities to an extreme degree. (SeeImage)
>1SP: Step [5]x1. Icarus quietly skulks further towards the center of the roof.
>3AP: Icarus inscribes a Major Ward onto the stonework of the tile [4]x1 of his current position. Clearly only a fragment of a larger ward.
>3AP: Withdrawing the shard of stonework he pilfered from the ruin's base from a pocket, Icarus begins etching an extensive ward mesh across its surface, creating an arrangement specialized towards arrest and retention of metaphysical qualities.
>>
Rolled 6, 2, 6, 5, 2, 5, 1, 5, 5 = 37 (9d6)

>>6113791
What a shot, what a shot - most impressive, and I mean that. I'd love to have a sit down with your marksman sometime after I survive this ordeal. Hey, don't tell me you're running to fetch that slinkthief I fought earlier? It's weird, right? No way he'd show his face after the camp saw him run! Oh, maybe that's why he HAS to come? Right, right?

Sorry, I get a bit chatty when I bleed. Yeah, I'll fight your man.

>2SP, sit down - might as well rest a bit before my foe arrives
>3AP+commit, recover - expend my bandages (Health 10)
>3AP+go slow, refuel (Gearwright 12)
>3AP, check my Lucky Token, a broken timepiece. Oh, it's still stuck on 5PM - a good sign, very good sign.

#Facsimile
-Metrics
Vitality 7/12 Stamina 7/12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Boostkit, Fuel 1/4, Speed 4
Wispcloak, +1 reaction, major to hide in terrain/cover, move and do at half
Lucky Token (Broken Timepiece)
Legion Grain, 1AP to deform or major to shape something
2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Empty Pockets
-Secrets
#Gearwright 12
#Filching 10
#Close Quarters 13
#Wrackstone 11
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: Add rank to first skill test if starting unengaged, add rank to reaction if ending engaged
!Sizable Gambling Debt
>>
>>6113792
>>6113366
How do we immediately act when we exit the building? Do we just open the door and run? Throw things?
>>
>>6113771
#Markhan
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 11 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 1

–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9 Reputation -2
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6

–Kit
Breacher's Kit, 4DR, 2DR on Limbs
Shortblade, Sharp
Halberd, Two Handed, Sharp, Impales, Shatters
Shield [30 HP, 5 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
1 Bandage, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
1 Citation for Valour

-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 11
#Polearm 13
#Small Unit Tactics-12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Masks and Mettel 1: If you start *adjacent* to an ally, they add +1 to all skill-test and speed. Spend up to Rank AP on behalf of ally (caps per ally)
!Armored Advance: Intentionally body slam targets when entering their tile, deal 1d6+1 per straight line movement prior

>1 AP, Move 6
>3 AP. Help the poor sod with a twisted ankle up onto the heights, No way he can climb up here on his own without breaking something.
>2 AP, Move 4 3
>1 AP. 'C'mon Markhan you old bastard, *think*! Do the Windsworn dislike the night out here? We had to have been briefed a little bit on the culture of these sand eaters... Void... does something *happen* out in these parts at night?' [Thoughts 9]
>1 AP. It's a bit hard, with the sun setting into his eyes, but while there's a bout of respite as the sun sets, Markhan will do his best to look over the battlefield in front of the village. If he can get some idea of the Windsworn's tactics, he might be able to salvage this. [Tactics 12]
>>
Rolled 3, 1, 1, 3, 4, 3 = 15 (6d6)

>>6113975
Bones: Rolling
>>
>>6113928
Let’s just run for it. I’ll spend the stamina to drop a smoke arrow.

Only waiting for Edward to confirm.
>>
Rolled 1, 6, 4, 3, 1, 1, 5, 4, 6 = 31 (9d6)

>>6113791
>AP3 Speed 2: Charge in with an elbow strike
>AP3: Push opponent of the cliff
>AP3: Grapple on opponent and position them between me and opposition.

"Oh hi there it seems our encounter was unexpected. But unfortunately i'll have to tell you to leave or make you. Your choice friends.
>>
>>6114072
Using CQC 13 ability
>>
Rolled 4, 6, 6 = 16 (3d6)

>>6112554
>3AP: Archers, keep suppressing the enemy North I'm going to try to navigate to them.
>4MP: Sneak 6661
>6AP: Try to sneak my way to the palm tree/bush at 111111 (Pathfinding-10+3AP?, I'd like to use 1 out of the 4 fuel of my boost kit to help me get there ONLY IF IT'S SILENT)
>>
>>6113788
Commanding Powderhands:
>1 Speed: Enter Loose Formation
>1 Speed: Crouch
>3 AP: Aim
>3 AP: Overwatch towards the East
>>
Rolled 4, 4, 3 = 11 (3d6)

>>6113838
Iconotheurgy 201. Just because you could doesn't mean you can or should.
>1AP - Pick up that needle (kit?)
>3AP - Recall my lethality. If the troopers don't want to be twisted by Iconotheurgy, best to oblige them. (not sure if I get it all back or need to roll against Threshold. Leaving it unrolled here)
>1AP - Holster the needle. People want Luz to stop tugging at the fabric of creation and invoking Icons for vaguely related purposes gleaned from poetry rather than textbooks? Fine.
>3AP - Stand
>2 Move - Move into the Dunerunner's Hex

Voice of Self Preservation: We're about to be hit by significant amounts of fire damage from an Invocation.
Executive Mechanics: Where were you a few seconds ago? The Solar Flare isn't enough on its own anyway. Besides, I'll try to go low.
Eager Reason: Why waste time standing instead of just rolling towards them? We want to be below them anyway.
Executive Mechanics: I haven't rolled in a while and don't remember how difficult it is. Best not to risk it.
Voice of Self Preservation: Also, I'd be exposing my back to a hostile spear. It might look cool, but rolling human sized balls are surprisingly easy to stab.

>1AP, 2SP, CQC 13, Gauntlets - Wrestle that Dunerunner into a binding grapple, preferably with the Dunerunner facing the fire. My goal is to capture the Dunerunner. This way, if the troopers decide to pile on to keep me from more frontier Iconotheurgy at least they'll be helping me achieve my goal.

8/12 Vit, 4/12 SP; 12/12 Resolve, 0/1 Insight
Hands: Empty. Hat: Secured? In need of return to proper owner?
>>
Rolled 3, 6, 2, 6, 3, 6 = 26 (6d6)

>>6113737
>3AP: Direct our break-out attempt to improve our coordination. Basic plan is to make some noise, get them to start busting through the barricade and ideally the plates and make a run for it out the back and to the east (Small Unit Tactics 11)
>3AP, 2MP: Go, go, go!
>3AP: Throw scarflask at anyone who has the misfortune of getting in our way (Alchemineering 12)


>>6113928
>>6113978
Confirmed. Let us move with haste.
>>
>>6113794
>6 AP, 2 Speed: RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN (following the plan for where to go)
>3 AP: Commit to Defending myself
>>
>>6113737
6 AP, 2 Speed: Run!
3 AP: Deploy a smoke arrow at our feet, if enemy marksmen spot us.
>>
>>6114136
It is explained to me that smoke arrows are meant to be launched *at other people*, not us.

To that end, please amend that conditional to be ‘deployed against the marksmen shooting at us’, not ‘at our feet’.

Thank you.
>>
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>>6113838
WHAT??
YOU'LL HAVE TO SPEAK LOUDER JOVE
THEY CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE SCRAGHOUNDS

YOU THREW FOOD IN FRONT OF THEM AND THEY WENT ABSOLUTELY BALLISTIC
>>
>>6114144
Wull, Oi dropped the food last, see. Shoulda 'eard mosta the terms, even if it's a bit 'ard to 'ear y'thoughts now.
>>
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Wickerlight throws a quickspark flask and it bounces off of a helmet then off of a leaf then off of a spear and finally it detonates in a bright-flash flare that makes most of the Murmuration Windsworn blink and wipe their eyes, but giving al the bouncing the chemicals shaked all wrong. The Resolute Crows yield a little more ground, falling back by degrees. The Blue Rats and Wicklighter both fail to Sense or Think about their intentions but judging by the uproariously smug smiles on the Crows faces, they have some greater plan in mind as the Windsworn come at them.

Both the Rats and Wicklighter have time to think. In that last exchange of blows, the entire group in front of them melted away !!

--

Rion shows some people the basics of CQC

--

Luz shakes himself off of the ground, snaps his fingers and bends his own strength back into his limbs and then moves in for the takedown of that Dunerunner. The armlock and kick combo snaps right through the mans chest. He flakes away in the wind. Most of him is ash. The shimmering refracted sunlight boil around him and Luz feels the ambient lingering heat of some great concentration of thermal energy. Behind him, Phridon glances down at the hat on his feet (on fire) and the ward below him (blown wide open and scoring ash across the sands).

Praise the Sun.

--

Markhan shakes the rigor into the formation. Ponders what the Windsworn could possibly hope to achieve. Their tactics here are simple, if effective. If they place archers on the high cliffs and rain arrows down on the Company, the Company will die by degrees and have no recourse. If wait out the Company by blockading the hill, surely, our water will run out first and the hot dusty day become our doom. But they do neither. Instead. . . *really* thinking about, Markhan spots the oddity in their tactics, the flaw in their ferocious design.

They don't want to be here at all.

But they're waiting for some signal to start their withdrawal process.

And then, on the wind, perhaps quite ahead of schedule, perhaps entirely beyond plans and intentions, a wild pack of feral Scraghounds start barking.

--

Facsimilie has a nice relaxing time in the village. One of the Windsworn threw him a sort of crumbly biscuit thing with a faint taste of honey. Nice. Goes well with the water.

--

In the village, Edwards kick a door, Scarlett follows, Zivka brings up the guarded rear and flings a smoke arrow out across the troopers and Montosi dashes through the doorway like a spark leaping to start a wildfire and then *ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE*

>???????
>?!?!?!?!
>>
SIR!!! IS EVERYTHING ALLRIGHT? WE GOT HELD UP BECAUSE ROBERT DROPPED HIS SHOE AND IT'S A LONG MARCH AND

AND DID WE MISS ANYTHIN--

WHY -- WHAT-- HOW-- WHAT--

WHY ARE YOU ALL SWEATY AND COVERED IN BLOOD AND ARROWS

>... all banners mustered and accounted for
>>
Barks in the wind. Distant howls. The Blue Rats shake - take a step back - surprised. Rion is shoved and kicked away and his assailants flee. The scraghounds come, from the village, from the woods, from the fields.

Cunning artifice has wrapped tiny brushes and bristles to their collars, they have sticks and branches tucked and tied to their tails, as they paw the ground seeking freedom, they kick up dirt, dust, debris, and the relentless churning tide of four legged beast kick up a dust storm as they pound and bound and yelp and leap away away away.

One of the Blue Rats fails to stand his ground and belts, too shocked by the horror and the weirdness of it all . On the higher ground that Markhan has set the unit to take, they're safer, but even so, the Ironwrought Vanguard shudder, shake, surprised, shocked, confused.

The Scraghounds are hardly . . . hunting us! They bound for their freedom, released at long last from chains and bondages and simply set to run away and seek some elsewhere.

but the noise! The dust!! The confusion!!! In all the screaming yowling howling cacophony, we lose sight of our opponents. Some of the archers let off a few chasing shots at them, but ... we're only seeing their backs. They're withdrawing! They're leaving *the field* !!!!!

Markhan sees it now, yes, this isn't some horror of death and destruction, these bounding, pounding leaping pasts makes chasing the Windsworn now hard, one fights against the tide, and the hounds are apt to bite if we don't get out of the way. The Windsworn planned this all along, but their formations are out of order, their withdrawal retreat is in total disarray because somehow the signal was given far too early and the hounds started barking long before they were meant to. Some of the Windsworn look confused - others out of breath - others still sprint for some distances - some stand and fight, briefly, before others grab and drag and poke and prod them along. The disunity is total, at least in the sections that Markhan can see.

but . . . Dare we chase them? The Hounds would interfere, we'd be fighting amongst beast running underfoot, throug us, past us, by us, trying to get away, trying to find freedom, and if their path is blocked they may turn very vicious indeed!

--

In the village, on Edward's mark, the door is kicked open in a flurry. Move. Throw. Smoke. Keep low, keep running, keep together. Arrows thud in around the group and one of the troopers spot an alley - shout - yes!! there!! through it and around! Edward stumbles, Scarlett gets him up and going, Montosi throws a smoke grenade and Zivka fires an arrow. The troopers keep their shields up!

You're clear! Catch your breath!

Dust is thick in the air. The village resounds with barking, yowling, howling, the chattering of a enormous pack of Scraghounds. Zivka recognises the tells: a feral pack, loose from the leash, seeking freedom.

>WHAT THE VOID
>UH
>YOUR MOVE?
>>
>>6114213
>Find self
>>
>>6113877
Ah, the wind up here is bracing. Your thoughts twirl in them, free. Unbound. Little scraps of old books and older knowledge drift past and you find your eyes wandering off to sights unseen. As you scribble a ward before you, your thoughts take a sideways stumble. Something whispers at the back of your mind. Inspiration, consideration or the little touch of distant things? You etch your animist needle through the skin of a rock, marking the boundary between Here and the Other and as you close the loop, you realize what you're thinking about.

The Flameless Furnance, though in scholastic parlance, they call such a thing a Telesmatic Convoker, a design of looping loops. One feeds in intent and refines it, each layer compressed, shaped, goaded on, driven to the purest expression of an ideal - an ideotype. The world falls away. Impurities flake. What remains is the compressed expression of a Truth, a thing of beauty, and a thing of strength. Though a thing of intent - Telesmatic Convokers are hard design to make. The stresses enormous. The *strain* on the ward guides larger still. One twirls a tiny speck and tugs it through the guiding circles, and each loop, it cannot escape outwards, so instead, it grows. Larger. Larger still. But compressed, contained, conjoined in some design.

In carpentry, they use ropes and leverage to reduce the weight of heavy logs.

The symmetry is astounding for the principle is similar. Each looping ward circle lets a single animist express more and more forceful precision and bend the world.

But telesmatic convocation design are not commonplace. In Pyther, it is whispered, they have a few - functional ones - in the House of the Bonded. The designs are theoretical. The idea has been tested by Free College Resonance Specialists. There is a . . . flaw. At the heart of the design. Something that no one has yet managed to bypass. Perhaps something that cannot be bypassed.

For each warding loop, the focus leveraged on some input grows incrementally. What is one to one becomes one to two to three to four to eight to sixteen and on and on and on it grows. But with each loop, the wards experience ever more mounting pressure. The strain, the Threshold buckles, the attention like steel jaws clamped around a little bit of the world, held and pure, shudders and shakes and strains material reality itself. You add more force. You add more focus. You add more warding layers. Bypasses. Reservoirs. Feedback dampeners. Compensators. Compressors. Water. Salt. Prayer. Hope. Dreams.

And each step gives you more, but the curve flattens. The world grows. The flaw is in the hope: All researchers hope perhaps one day one can gain more output than one puts in. That there could be some refinement process that bypasses the material whole.

But each researcher finds that a telesmatic convoker, when loaded fully and resonant with some grand truth, becomes a whirling well of threshold energy that hums with the Other.
>>
>>6114213
#Icarus
=Metrics=
Vitality 12 // Stamina 7/12 // Focus 12
Action 9 // Speed 2
=Stats=
Will 10 // Health 10 // Grit 10
Sense 10 // React 9
Lethality 1d6 // Threshold 1d6
=Kit=
-Equipment-
Weaver's Whip
=Secrets=
#Iconotheurgy12
#Analysis12
#Wards13 (Base 10)
#Rope13
=Traits=
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Edges and Insights 1
!Threshold DR 1

>1SP: Icarus carefully places the warded shard of stone into the central focal point of the specialized ward @ [2]x1.
>2MP: Icarus steps [4]x1, skirting between the gaping hole in the roof and the trapdoor, then settles into a crouch.
> 3AP: Icarus inscribes a Major Ward onto the stonework of the tile @ [5]x1, doing his best to augment the geometry to compensate as best he can with the imperfect surface.
> 3AP: Icarus inscribes a Major Ward onto the stonework of the tile @ [4]x1, doing his best to augment the geometry to compensate as best he can with the imperfect surface.
> 3AP: Icarus connects the Wards at [4]x1, [5]x1, and his current positions into a singular large Ward and attunes the entire arrangement to Probos by adding the appropriate invocational sigils.
>>
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>>6114232
You can try to fix the flaws. Other designs. Better grounding. Better sigildry. More precise warding. More precise working. More precise guidance. Better whispers. More theurges. More training. More focus. More. More. More. More.

But the inevitable flaw lies in human fallibility. At some point, someone is going to lose concentration, and as more and more force is gathered and concentration the dangers of a cascade grows exponentially, the churning forces held tight by will and stricture alone, guided, bent, directed, condessed, compressed, and sheer will though it can move mountains does sometimes flicker - for just the barest second . . .
>>
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>>6114241
And we should rember the old truth:

Try not to invoke what you cannot control.
Try not to conjure what you cannot put down.

You concentrate the world into a sharp point in space and time . . . who knows what you're poking holes in or what might leak through in a blip of your attention and the most miniscule of moments where you are not fully focused. You've harnessed such power. It becomes a beacon. A light to all the hungry things.

They say a shadow once fell through a little rent in the bound woven skein of the world. A little thing, of light and shades and shadows, of rainbow colours cast like a cloak and worn like a mantle. They say it grew and learned and asked and talked and found it rather liked this curious little place. Made it a sort of home. Bound itself it Here, having wrenched its existence entire from There - the Other - and though it goes by many names the most common is The One Who Walked Away, The Many Colored Shadow, The Shimmercloak Traveller. Volariel.

Telesmatic convokers are hard to get right and very, very easy to get wrong.
>>
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>>6114232
>>6114241
>>6114244
>>
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>>6114163
>>6114213
Whoever bought these fellows out must have had quite the deep purse then. Icons' teeth, I can't see an end to them! And those dogs! Can't anyone shut them up!? Ugh... You! And You! With me, we should take at least one of them alive! We need information!

#Markhan
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 11 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 1

–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9 Reputation -2
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6

–Kit
Breacher's Kit, 4DR, 2DR on Limbs
Shortblade, Sharp
Halberd, Two Handed, Sharp, Impales, Shatters
Shield [30 HP, 5 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
1 Bandage, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
1 Citation for Valour

-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 11
#Polearm 13
#Small Unit Tactics-12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Masks and Mettel 1: If you start *adjacent* to an ally, they add +1 to all skill-test and speed. Spend up to Rank AP on behalf of ally (caps per ally)
!Armored Advance: Intentionally body slam targets when entering their tile, deal 1d6+1 per straight line movement prior

>3 AP, pick 2 of the freshest, least frightened men from the Sharps and scale down the cliff face. Along with the scrag, it's scent should mark at least 3 men as friends, no? All others should remain on the heights, the dogs shouldn't bother you lads.
>6 AP, Make a mad bloody dash towards the fleeing Windsworn to the east. Markhan would love a Dunerunner, but if he can't find one, a grunt will do, but he knows he won't get nearly as much information out of a recruit than he would out of an officer.
>>
>>6114257
You really don't need to recklessly run after a horde of enemies if you want one of them captured alive. There are plenty strewn along the battlefield with broken legs, twisted ankles, and otherwise incapacitated but not quite dead yet that you don't need to throw your life away obtaining.
>>
>>6114263
They're being dragged away by their friends as we speak. I'd have to run for them anyway, I did overlook the one I clonked on the head with a rock though.
>>
>>6114270
They are leaving the field as quick as they can. There are plenty of grey enemies around which are not dead.
>>
>>6114270
Well of course if you insist in charging them go right ahead, I suppose I don't have much reason to stop you. Just, you know. You don't have to.
>>
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>>6114271
>>6114272
And from Marky's point of view, they appear to be dragging off the ones that would be easy to capture as well. If I want a live one, I'll need to get them to drop their wounded and flee faster anyway.
>>
Rolled 1, 4, 3, 5, 4, 6, 4, 4, 3 = 34 (9d6)

>>6114213
#Wicklighter
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 10/12 Focus 10/12
Action 9 Speed 2
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Alchemineering Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Longblade - +1 damage, Sharp
1 Coinbit
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 9
#Filching 10
#Alchemineering 12
#CQC 12
#Blades 14
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Malice and Mirth 1: If unengaged, add rank to first skill test. If engaged, add rank to all Reaction tests
!Rikovan: Can spend Focus as I would Stamina, and always regain at least 1 Focus when I Recover

>2 AP: Crows, Rats, they're not after you! Just stand still and rest up!
>3 AP: Rally the Blue Rats (Influence 9+1). For steel's sake, calm down, they'll only chase if you run!
>3 AP: Recover Focus (Will 10)
>1 AP: The hounds are just a distraction. Tune them out, stay wary. (Sense 10)
>>
>>6114213
> 9 AP, 2 Speed: Duck across the street, slip across the houses and double back towards the alleyway their mule was hiding in.

The rest of you can go off, but I’m a stubborn, foolish woman at heart.
>>
Rolled 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 5 = 11 (6d6)

>>6114231
>1AP - Order the Sharpshooters to perform first aid on the wounded.
>2MP, 5AP - Sprint around the cliffs to catch the fleeing archers. 4,4,4 3,3,3,3. Fist set of dice.
>3AP - CQC 13 - grab one of the retreating archers. Goal is to capture at least 1. 2nd set of dice.
>2SP - Pull the archer back with me through the smoke, away from their friends. Will they shoot their friend through smoke?

8/12 Vit, 2/12 SP; 12/12 Resolve, 0/1 Insight
Hands: Empty. Hat: Secured
>>
>>6114213
>9AP, 2MP: Follow Zivka through the alleys and to the mule

Scarlett, lead everyone else to safety. Retrieving the mule is a matter of honour for me. and life and death
>>
>>6114213
"Montosi and Spears, with me. We'll wait for those archers to pass and we can sneak out through the North."

>2 Speed, 3 AP: Move 1221 2
>6 AP: Hide among the trees
>>
>>6114213
Groan! Wake up from your great slumber Ser Stalwart, you've slept through half or even most a battle! not to mention most of the march (but can you blame me? walking through these blasted dunes messes with you, damned sand-sickness)

Stalwart should've laid off the stashed alcohol. He's still groggy and tired.

>Speed 1 + 2AP, Move 6-6-5
>6AP, use the rest of of my energy to get ontop of that building!
>1AP, say hello to the Coldeyed Archers while I'm here. Nice weather we're having.

#Ser Stalwart the Standstill (Self-Proclaimed)
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 1
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 8
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
+Breacher Kit, 4DR
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [30 HP, 5 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets (1 Coinbits)
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
Harquebus, 4d6 Impact, Malfunctions on 16+, 3AP to reload, Doubles as a +1 Club in melee
-Secrets
#Strength 11
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Muskets-13
#Armsmaking-10
#Carousing-14
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Armoured Advance 1: Intentionally body-slam targets upon entering their tile, deal 1d6+1 per straight-line movement prior
!Of Steel Hearts 1: If end unengaged, regain Vitality equal to rank. If end engaged, gain bonus damage reduction equal to rank
!Extra Rota
!Armoured 1
>>
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Rolled 4, 5, 6, 3, 5, 1, 1, 5, 3, 3, 3, 4, 3, 6, 4, 3, 6, 3 = 68 (18d6)

>>6114513
Ah, Ser Stalwart, stoic, steely, strong-- let us go through your action, indeed, let us see here. . .

>1 Speed, 2 AP: FLEE IN A HORRIFED PANIC 665, SPRINTING AS FAST AS FAR AS I AM ABLE (3d6, 10+Speed = 11)

>3AP, testing twice: OH GOD THE DOGS. THEY WILL EAT MY HONOUR AAAHHHHH CLIMB SCREAM CRAWL UP UP UP (10+1 = 11 x2)

>1AP: OH, ALLIES, GET THEM AWAY FROM ME HOLD THEM OFF PLEASE NO I CANNOT BEAR THE BARKING AAAHHHHHHHHHH (Influence 10)

>0AP: I AM HONEST TRUE JUST VIRTOUS CHIVALROUS GRAND I DO NOT FEAR THE WYLDEST KNIGHT I AM NOT TO BE TAKEN BY THE WANDERING PANCAKE HUT ( Will 10, +1 Reikan, 11)

>If I fail, I force spend 3SP to dive off of this roof and belt it out across the fields ( 10, +1 Speed, Heavy Armor -2 = 9 )
>>
Rolled 2, 4, 4, 5, 2, 5, 2, 1, 6 = 31 (9d6)

>>6114213
"Praise the Empyreal Eye."

>3AP: Recover Stamina. [Health 10]
>3AP: "The enemies flee, men! Take heart. All fought well." Try to recover The Reckless Ashfingers from being Shaken. [Influence 11, Reputation 2]
>3AP: Same, but for Fresheyed Archers. [Influence 11, Reputation 2]
>>
Rolled 1, 2, 5, 2, 2, 5 = 17 (6d6)

>>6114213
>Free action: 33 32 Controlled burst controlled landing (Fuel 2/4)
>Speed 3 AP1: Move 22 22 If i move with the hound i am not stopping them
>AP 3: Inspect how badly the plated spear has been hurt (Sense 11)
>AP 3: Let the hounds pass me and the spearman of undetermined condition (Animal handling base)
>>
>>6114551
"An hop and skip, roll on landing, weave along the puppers. See how badly this one was hurt. There's another pack of them but luckily they are hounds rough and tumble punch but sensible just let them run past simple really."
>>
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>>6114551
>>6114553
Wear armor - it saves lives.
>>
>>6114713
. . . hey what's that . . . sound . . .
>>
Rolled 6, 6, 4, 4, 3, 2 = 25 (6d6)

>>6114213
"Well that was embarassing...And yes Sunstains. You ARE and missed a bit. At least you're here."

>3AP: Order people to pick up their wounded and unconcziouz and gather them in a Triage area. Then they can rest and reform. (Small Unit Tactics 11 + Authority 1?)
>3AP: Anyone else not busy to form a cordon from the road in the South. I'll be with them zhortly they are to keep a watchul eye and catch theeeir breath. (Small Unit Tactics 11 + Authority 1?)
>3AP: Call my specialist expert in Triage to come help the wounded. (Not zure what cool ztat zo here my zheet)
>2MP: Regroup with my bannermen

#Caedo
=Metrics=
Vitality 10/12 // Stamina 13 // Focus 13
Action 9 // Speed 2
=Stats=
Will 10 // Health 10 // Grit 10
Sense 10 // React 9
Reputation 1 // Authority 1
Lethality 1d6 // Threshold 1d6
=Kit=
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Weaver's Whip
Whitebone needle
1 Bit
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
=Secrets=
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Iconotheurgy 12
#Wards 13(10)
#Rope 14
#Small Unit Tactics 11
#Religious Ritual 11 (Pytherii)
=Traits=
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Masks and Mettle 1
!Well Read
!Threshold DR 1
=Bannermen and Support=
(x6) Blade-11 troopers
(x1) Young but well adjusted expert in Triage, Surgery and medical matters
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Rolled 2, 2, 2 = 6 (3d6)

>>6114213
>4MP+3AP: Return to the Coldeyed Archers moving 3-4-4-4-4-3-3
>3AP: Quick, go pick up our blade handlers laid out on the road and bring them in here. Enemy hound stampedee incoming. Stay quiet when they pass. Don't panic. They can see you if your calm and collected (Influence 10+4 from Mobility kit 2/4gas left
>3AP: Once the Archers come back with the blades, close doors and try to stay silent

#Crushfists
-Metrics
Vitality 12 Stamina 12 Focus 12
Action 9 Speed 3
–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 10
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6
–Kit
Uniform, DR 2
Shortblade, Sharp
Shield [18 HP, 3 DR, +2Def]
Boostkit, Fuel 2/4, Speed 4
Wispcloak, +1 reaction, major to hide in terrain/cover, move and do at half
Better Pair of Boots
Empty Pockets
2 Bandages, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 10
#Gearwright 12
#Closequarters 14 (Rikovol)
#Pathfinding 10
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina and 1 focus (Rikovol)
!Of Cold Winds 1: Unengaged +speed. Engaged +dmg
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File: Windworne Skirmish 9(1).png (3.56 MB, 3008x7001)
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Markahn slides down the inclide in a spray of scree and rock, and a trio of blades dash with him forming a triangular shield wedge. Zivka's fine hound lops alongside and the onrushing stampede parts like a wave. A little personal space among the throng. Rion is not quite so lucky and has to duck, dodge, weave and move and if he was any less nimble he would, like Labyrs and the Blue Rat who ran, been bowled over and pawed and mauled and probably scratched and bit. Instead, he lands safely next to a vanguard who, even now, clutches his spear in one hand and stares up with a grim determination, too paralyzed by pain and shock to move but not quite beyond the reach of the company doctors.

--

Speaking of those same specialist, Caedo whistles a signal and a Crewgroup arive - bearing tools to set up a triage area and help shift and sort through the wounded. The formations nearby lock their steps and lock their shields, forming up a solid barricade to channel the mass of hounds around themselves.

--

Military science has long disproven the notion that cavalry will charge a stout pike square or proper formation of musketeers with bayonets affixed. No living animal is brutish enough to crash willing into another full speed. One needs trained, professional soldier to be so reckless. Scraghounds may not be horses but by forming a solid seeming barrier, planting our feet and resiting the urge to break and run before them, they naturally try to inch around stampeding elsewhere. The trick of it is to maintain composure. Hold steady. And never, ever flinch.

--

Wicklighter shoves a Blue Rat back in formation and the Resolute Crows aren't going to be shown up by that and so they plant their feet, lower their pikes and bristle menacingly at the incoming hounds. They curve around.

--

Markhan pushes through the horde and lunges for a Dustrunner, gets his gauntlet'd hand around the mans billowing cloak off office - a Dustcloak? You? You caught a Dustcloak? In hand to hand? The men who live the swirling sand? The women who dance the wind? You caugh-- ah, with a twist, a turn, a tumble, the agile Windsworn twists out of his regalia of office and then for the first time, above the barking and shouting, they make communicate with sound.

He whistles. Once. Sharp. Clear.

And the trees respond - - -

... GET DOWN!!!!

>... !!!!!!
>Response Phase
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>>6114751
>Markhan [Commits] to getting out of this situation alive.

#Markhan
-Metrics
Vitality 4/12 Stamina 11 Focus 12
Action 9 (+3 [Committed]) Speed 1

–Stat
Will 10 Health 10 Grit 10 Sense 10
React 9 Reputation -2
Lethality 1d6 Threshold 1d6

–Kit
Breacher's Kit, 4DR, 2DR on Limbs
Shortblade, Sharp
- Halberd, Two Handed, Sharp, Impales, Shatters [Dropping]
Shield [30 HP, 5 DR, +2Def]
Empty Pockets
1 Bandage, 2 Torches, 2 Bags of Salt
1 Citation for Valour

-Secrets
#Thoughts 9
#Influence 11
#Polearm 13
#Small Unit Tactics-12
-Traits
!Through Clenched Teeth 1: When you Recover, always regain at least 1 Stamina
!Of Masks and Mettel 1: If you start *adjacent* to an ally, they add +1 to all skill-test and speed. Spend up to Rank AP on behalf of ally (caps per ally)
!Armored Advance: Intentionally body slam targets when entering their tile, deal 1d6+1 per straight line movement prior

>1 AP Drop the halberd, I can retrieve it later
>1 AP, Draw my shield, and only my sturdy shield , to block the oncoming arrows
>1 AP, Shout at the Ironwrought to get back up the fucking slope. I didn't give them an order to move, so they shouldn't bloody move, gesture with my free hand to emphasize, just in case they can't hear me over the din.
>1 AP, throw the Dustrunner's cloak into the air, towards the bowmen, to disorient and blind them if possible
>3 AP: Order the other two Sharps with me to go 'Shields Up'
>5 AP: Move 11166
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Rolled 1, 4, 5 = 10 (3d6)

>>6114765
SORRY MARKHAN! VERY VOID DAMN ICON TOUCHED BRAVE AND HEROIC BUT IT'S NOT QUITE OUR TURN YET

BUT COMMITING DOES GIVE YOU 3 MORE AP. . .

. . . THROWING THE CLOAK *MIGHT JUST WORK*
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>>6114774
GAHHHH THE BLOOD IN MY EYES MADE ME THINK 'THAT MEANS YOU LOT' WAS WRITTEN THERE COMMAND!
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File: Windworne Skirmish 10.png (3.36 MB, 3008x7001)
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Luz lunges for a feeling Windsworn. We need information and intelligence to find out what this is all about and we need it from living, breathing Windsworn, not the dead lying across the field. This must be why they're carrying away their wounded. Luz gets his hands around his target and begins pulling away.

Of the 21 people he heroically attacked on his own, some continue moving. Others notice their missing partner not filling in the ranks and spin about, drawing knives, coming to quick conclusions.

Luz grinds his feet into the road and shoves away two attemps on his life, kicks a counter to a third and takes three more as the knives keep on coming, the smoke, the dust, the wind, it makes it hard to see them!!

--

Rion feels a sharp, imaculate sting of pain. Critical hit. Vital puncture. The wound is small, circular, clean through the uniform and it simply will not stop bleeding. First aid bandages won't fix this one. You need medical attention. NOW.

--

Markhan drops his halberd (1AP), throws the cloak (1AP) and it sails through the air, infused with Scraghound repellant. The churning tide of teeth spread around it, some bounding into the bushes and disturbing the aim of ambushing archers. The wide, fluttering cloak absorb two more hits - sometimes you get lucky and even Probos winks at you across the endless table -and then with 1 AP, Markhan equips his reinforced Breacher shield and the three men around, though riddled with arrows stand on their feet, lock shields, and to the sound of Zivka's loyal hound barking its kin at bay, they wheather the storm. Arrows stick out of the ground. Out of the hounds. Out of the shields. Out of Markhans armor, like some sort of hedgehog, he's sprouted quills.

But the hounds are lessening now and look! They had that pre-prepared, lying in wait, readying an Aimed Attack. Absolute lethal, but their arrows are spent and the first thing they do is sprint away as far as their legs can carry them, heading towards their distant friends.

Markhan looks at the Dustcloak, wrapped around a stickbush. Billowing there. One might not think it, but that - right there - is a trophy very few people have ever acquired in close quarters combat. On the vast Uthani Plains, across the Leviathan Strait, the Grasscloaks and Reedcloaks fight their endless sectarian wars. But in the Wastes, there are the Windsworn, who follow the Soaring, and heed the Tumbling and the Windsworn have but one knightly commanding caste of officer-cadet-clergy supreme. The Dustcloaks.

That arrow riddled, dog bitten, trampled, shredded thing? You wear that across your shoulder and you get free drinks in every bar from here to the coat.

--
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File: Rescues Big And Small.png (359 KB, 1504x978)
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Crushfist saves a man's life. And his shouted orders saves another. Wicklighter locks eyes with a Windsworn Dustcloak Dunerunner. He's smiling. Dances his fingers in a little polite greeting. Nice sharp thing. Do you know how to use that, little speck?

Edward and Zivka creep along the village, hearing the distant sound of pounding feed, spying for money and mules and finding both. One very content company beast of burden is chewing a little bit of grass in the alley up ahead.

Scarlett and the Troopers get a crash course in advanced forest stealth maneuvering by a tax assessment clerk. Must get a lot of use for that, when you sneak into mansions to perform an on-the-spot estate tax re-evaluation. Up ahead, Windsworn dash away into the distance.

>The green lines indicate the movement they will take this turn, at the end of your actions. If you stay right where you are, they'll run right past you. You don't see anyone else coming in from the side. You estimate in this environment, you impose a minus -4 to their Sense if you are near a tree and hiding, so with the weather giving a further -1 per 3, as long as you stay more than 4 away any Windsworn and in cover, the odds of them seeing you are cataclysmically low.

Icarus ponders the sacred sigildry of divine things.
A broodling of Spitescorps are on the prowl.
The wind is howling.

--

THE WINDSWORN ARE BREAKING OFF CONTACT. WE . . . HAVE THE FIELD? UH! I DIDN'T EXPECT THIS TO END IN DOGS, RECRUITS!

Those RED ZONES mark areas where the SCRAGHOUNDS pounding across the ground get so concentrated they are COLLIDING WITH PEOPLE. Though this game *is* turn-based, things happen in a simultaneous manner in the "real world" that you are all in; the hounds are not "frozen in time" at this moment and are still moving and bounding. If you don't redirect them somehow and stay out of those red zones, they'll be mostly clear. If you do enter into a red zone, odds are a Scraghound will slam into you. Likely more than one. Move fast.

Did you know you can perform Speed Checks by adding your Speed to 10 and testing against it as a 1AP action (quick single thing) or 3 AP Major Action (advanced speedy acrobatics?). It's true! If you're going to be dashing across stampede hound fields, it might come in handy.

--

Montosi checks the corner. Nods. Hands her Scarflask to Scarlett [2d3 Acid]. Twirls the sharp knife the Windsworn threw at the group through her hands.

" I'll peel left - you lot head on ahead. More of us might make it that way "

--

STAY ALIVE NOW, PEOPLE
WE'RE **ALMOST** THROUGH THIS
LET'S NOT LOSE ANYONE TO A SUDDEN CASE OF HEROISM, ALRIGHT?

>ORDER PHASE
>THAT MEANS
>YOU
>LOT!!!!!!!!!
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>>6114784
Command, looking at that mule

Could we lure it out of the alley from the south end, or is the point it narrows *too* narrow for bulky four legged creatures to move?
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>>6114790
"We've got a full Company somewhere in the area, with any luck they'll be coming to look for our mule sometime soon. If we don't meet up, head North and look for [Company Insignia and description of our Banner / Identifying Characteristics]. You also stay safe, Montosi."

>1 AP: Sling my musket
>3 AP: Aim my movement
>2 Speed, 2 AP: Sneak 6661
>3 AP: Hide
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Rolled 6, 2, 4, 2, 1, 1, 3, 2, 1, 4, 1, 2 = 29 (12d6)

>>6114790
#Icarus
=Metrics=
Vitality 12 // Stamina 7/12 // Focus 12
Action 9 // Speed 2
=Stats=
Will 10 // Health 10 // Grit 10
Sense 10 // React 9
Lethality 1d6 // Threshold 1d6
=Kit=
-Equipment-
Weaver's Whip
=Secrets=
#Iconotheurgy12
#Analysis12
#Wards13 (Base 10)
#Rope13
=Traits=
!Through Clenched Teeth 1
!Of Edges and Insights 1
!Threshold DR 1

> 1MP: Icarus stands up.
> 1MP: Icarus positions himself into the center of the three-tile ward he is standing in.
> 2AP: Attempt to Link the crowd of Windsworn brutalizing Luz @ [4]x4 to the Telesmatic Convoker @ [1]x1, [2]x1 (Iconography12+1)
> 2AP: Attempt to Link the pack of Scraghounds @ [4]x8 to the Telesmatic Convoker @ [1]x1, [2]x1 (Iconography12+1)
> 2AP: Attempt to Link the pack of Scraghounds @ [4]x6, [5]x2 to the Telesmatic Convoker @ [1]x1, [2]x1 (Iconography12+1)
> 3AP : Attempt to shunt (Threshold) positive probabilistic outliers (Good Fortune) from all of the recently linked lifeforms into the impromptu Telesmatic Convoker located roughly [1]x1, [2]x1 of Icarus' current position. (Iconography12)
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>>6114794
You're already as hidden as hidden can be - you do not need to repeat the action to hide every turn. Think of "Stealth" as a "sticky" state - you enter it with a major action and until you then do something that's loud and obnoxious, you are presumed to try and be quiet.

If you *do* make a major action to hide - as you did - what happens is that there's a temporary bonus to your particular stealth for this turn, if anyone wanders by. You're *actively* trying to keep out of sight, as well as relying on cover and concealment.

This is usually best if you have a Whispercloak or other camouflage, or have studied the secrets of the Slipstep. Your generic Company Training does cover a bit of the old hide and seek, but you are functionally simply getting a +1 to what is already a decently sizable set of circumstantial modifiers (in cover, staying quiet) etc.
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>>6114797
Alas, though the Scraghounds are bounding fiercely along and you can steal the odd bit of good fortune from them, smoke and sand and bothersome clouds of debris block those Windsworn.

( The Scraghounds aren't easy either, but at least there's enough of them around that you can try to steal some fortune from the ones you can see )
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>>6114798
Should be fine then, I don't feel comfortable moving forward more than I have and it doesn't hurt to make a cataclysmically low chance of them seeing me a little lower.
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>>6114784
Am I still having a lovely, relaxing time in the village? I'm telling you, nobody gives any respect these days - anything but punctual, these Windsworn. They'll leave a man waiting all night for a duel to the death.

Maybe the company should start looking into my replacement?
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>>6114799
Whoops.
Well, the target is locked-in since I've already made the roll for it.
All I can do is live with and learn from my mistakes.
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