>>6456366
Interesting stuff, QM. For classes should we stick to D&D Classics, or are we free to go a little more broad with it as well as equipment? Obviously not going to make a spaceman or anything but I thought I would ask. Also about HP: if we lose all HP in one of our Stats like Magic, Faith, Etc, does that character die?

>>6456380
>For classes should we stick to D&D Classics, or are we free to go a little more broad with it as well as equipment?
I will work with what the good anons provide. Given that the equipment is not exactly giving legendary buffs, maybe keep that in mind.

>Obviously not going to make a spaceman or anything but I thought I would ask.
If people vote for a spaceman, I will allow a spaceman. But he won't be a very well equipped one obviously.

>Also about HP: if we lose all HP in one of our Stats like Magic, Faith, Etc, does that character die?
It depends. KO'd, forced to yield, or killed if up against a lethal opponent. When you fall to 0 you lose whatever contest you are involved in.

>>6456366
>Name: Bagark
>Race: Half-orc
>Class: Fighter
>Skills: Axes, Bravery, Strength, Intimidation
>Body: 7 HP (2 Def)
>Mind: 5 HP (2 Def)
>Magic: 4 HP (1 Def)
>Faith: 4 HP (0 Def)
>Equipment: Axe, Chainmail

Bagark's life isn't a tragedy or a story of rejection. In fact he is the only child of two half-orcs who have both proven themselves enough to an Orc tribe to be accepted, begrudgingly or not. Now it is his turn to prove himself capable enough to earn his place in the tribe and he has chosen the same path as his parents. It's only been a week since he set out and he considers that he already has found someone looking for adventurers a good sign.

He is over six feet tall, and has a broad, heavy-boned build with a thick neck and wide shoulders. Two sharp, lower canines poke past his bottom lip, giving him a natural scowl. His chainmail is functional but lacks polish, showing minor scuffs and a dull metallic sheen. Finally simple, dark blue-black tattoos are etched across his skin, looking like they were done with a dagger point and soot.

>>6456366
Thank you for the swift response!

>Name: Buzz
>Race: Human?
>Class: Beekeeper
>Skills: Bee Tactics, Pain Tolerance, Nature Survival, Intimidation
>Body 6 HP
>Mind: 3 HP
>Magic: 5 HP
>Faith 4 HP
>Equipment: Beekeeper Suit (Physical Armor), Box of Bees (Physical Weapon)

Wrapped in a worn, honey-stained beekeeper suit that reeks of stale smoke and old blood, Buzz is left to their own, buzzing devices in the far side of the tavern as they sip a mug of freshly-poured mead through the thick netting of their face-obscuring bee-proof helmet.

"Adventure?!" They ask in a muffled tone dripping with barely-contained excitement, "... Where there's bees, there's honey..."

No one dares ask them what that means. Some answers, the tavern regulars silently agree, are best left unpursued...

>>6456390
oh and +1 defense in mind

>Name: Aller
>Race: Human
>Class: Rogue
>Quality: Roguish Charm
>Skills: Athletics, Sneaking, Seduction, Cunning
>Body: 4 HP (0 Def)
>Mind: 6 HP (2 Def)
>Magic: 5 HP (0 Def)
>Faith: 4 HP (0 Def)
>Equipment: Black Dagger, Rope

Aller is the sexiest, most egotistical man you ever saw!
Atleast his butt looks good in his black, tight, rogue's outfit.

>>6456396
Sorry, I don't think I was clear. As in the linked system, all your Aspects have 1 in Defense at start.

>>6456398
>Body: 5 HP (1 Def)
>Mind: 7 HP (2 Def)
>Magic: 5 HP (0 Def)
>Faith: 5 HP (1 Def)
Right, I redid my stats

File: TheFighter.png (13 KB, 264x349)

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>>6456366
>Name: John
>Race: Human
>Class: Fighter
>Skills: Craft, Athletics, Swords, Bravery, Basket-Weaving
>Body: 7 HP (2 Def)
>Mind: 5 HP (0 Def)
>Magic: 3 HP (1 Def)
>Faith: 6 HP (1 Def)
>Equipment: Sword, Half-Plate

All John knows is that he must kill. And weave baskets.

File: 489ec891-291a-484a-8b76-0(...).png (1.25 MB, 1852x1858)

1.25 MB PNG

>>6456366
>Name: Margaret
>Race: Mogwai girl
>Class: Witch Doctor
> I'll complete everything else later
Contrary to popular belief, Mogwai people are not short compared to other races. Maggie, however, is a total womanlet and gets very angry if someone points it out.
Don't let her eat past midnight (the Gremlin transformation reverts at 7AM) or get wet (water only)

>>6456439
We will need some stats before I post the vote, which I hope to do in a few hours. Good art though!

>>6456403
Kek! John's stats in the example were actually slightly too high because eif an error I made. Please lower one Aspect by 1.

>>6456439
I'm at work, if you can build a poisoner heater, it would be great. If you can't then so be it.
Also she's weak to light too

>>6456439
>>6456466
>Name: Margaret
>Race: Mogwai Girl
>Class: Witch Doctor
>Skills: Poison Use, Medicine, Witchcraft, Womanlet Rage
>Body: 4 HP (1 Def)
>Mind: 5 HP (1 Def)
>Magic: 7 HP (1 Def)
>Faith: 6 HP (1 Def)
>Equipment: Skull Staff (magic weapon), Amulet (magic armor)

>>6456403
>Name: John
>Race: Human
>Class: Fighter
>Skills: Craft, Athletics, Swords, Bravery, Basket-Weaving
>Body: 7 HP (2 Def)
>Mind: 5 HP (0 Def)
>Magic: 3 HP (1 Def)
>Faith: 5 HP (1 Def)
>Equipment: Sword, Half-Plate

>>6456396
>>6456400
>Name: Aller
>Race: Human
>Class: Rogue
>Skills: Athletics, Sneaking, Seduction, Cunning
>Body: 5 HP (1 Def)
>Mind: 7 HP (2 Def)
>Magic: 5 HP (0 Def)
>Faith: 5 HP (1 Def)
>Equipment: Black Dagger, Rope
Your race/class combo is your quality

>>6456387
>Name: Bagark
>Race: Half-orc
>Class: Fighter
>Skills: Axes, Bravery, Strength, Intimidation
>Body: 7 HP (2 Def)
>Mind: 5 HP (2 Def)
>Magic: 4 HP (1 Def)
>Faith: 4 HP (0 Def)
>Equipment: Axe, Chainmail
perfect as it was

>>6456390
>Name: Buzz
>Race: Human?
>Class: Beekeeper
>Skills: Bee Tactics, Pain Tolerance, Nature Survival, Intimidation
>Body 6 HP (1 Def)
>Mind: 3 HP (1 Def)
>Magic: 5 HP(1 Def)
>Faith 4 HP (1 Def)
>Equipment: Beekeeper Suit (Physical Armor), Box of Bees (Physical Weapon)
Inspired and terrifying! But I think you are due either
>another skill and 2 Aspect points
>4 aspect points
>2 aspect points and a defense point

>>6456500
>Skill: Alchemy (For honey)
>New Aspects:
>Body 6HP (1 Def)
>Mind 4HP (1 Def)
Magic 6 HP (1 Def)
Faith 4 HP (1 Def)

[green]Twelve hours in, so we're running with what we've got. A vote seemed pointless with only four real submissions, and John being a repeat of the example, but we'll keep him for funsies. Founding party: Bagark, Aller, Buzz, Margaret, and John. Members die, so latecomers will get their chance. Let's begin.[/green]

The Grizzly Bear Guesthouse was full tonight, though most of it was ordinary trade: trappers, a table of card-players, a merchant asleep on his pack. Five strangers made the rest of the room feel smaller.

"That's not a proper company," muttered a farmhand at the bar. "That's the bottom of the barrel."

"There's an orc," said his neighbor dourly.

"Half," corrected a third, a pedant. "You can tell by the nose, see?"

"And those two won't take their helmets off. One of them's got bees all on him. Is that even allowed?"

"Well... Adventurers are strange. Everyone knows that."

"The other masked man is weaving baskets and whistling. Makes me uneasy, I don't mind saying."

"At least they look proper dangerous. What about the pretty-boy over there? In the leathers so tight he can't breathe?" The first farmhand squinted. "What in the world is that thing?"

"What thing?"

"Don't be daft, the tiny lass with the... The skulls, and the ears."

"A demon from the Far East. My mum told me she saw one for those once."

"What, like a yokai?"

"A what?"

"That's what they're called."

"No, no, I'm sure my mum said that they're called... What was it now?... Oh right! A pokeman!"

"Have either of you *been* to the Far East?"

Silence.

Behind the bar, Zurham Gristmean set down the mug he'd been polishing. "Yokai, pokemon, orc, beeman. All the same tae me. The sign called them, and the sign has always called them." He said it like scripture. "Six generations that sign's been in me family. Hammer it in the earth in a time o' need, and they come. It's never once failed us."

"Didn't the last lot burn the place down?"

"Aye. But they killed the bloody dragon, did they nae? Gold from the hoard paid tae fix most o' the damage." He nodded at a rafter noticeably newer than its neighbors. "Most."

>>6456515
Just a heads up, QM: you can't use the formatting unless you have the IP of the original post. You can still spoilertext, but yea

>>6456515
The dwarf came round the bar, crossed the floor, and pulled up a stool uninvited before the five of them.

"Ye'll be wantin' tae know what the sign called ye for." He turned his mug slowly. "Started small. Trapper up the ridge, Orrin, his snares robbed in the night. We thought wolves. Then it's livestock. Tam's goats. The Muller sow, a hundredweight if she was an ounce, squealed once in the dead of night and was gone like a ghost ie by the time Mister Muller has worked up his nerve fer tae look in on 'er. A hundredweight o' pig doesnae just walk off, ye ken."

His voice, steady through to now, went thin.

"Then three nights past. Me nan. On hundred an' ninety-one, sharp as a tack. Stepped out back tae see about a noise in the yard, and..." He turned the mug. Didn't finish. "No' been seen since."

He set both hands flat on the table, nothing of the salesman left in his face.

"Somethin's takin' what's ours. Gettin' bolder. It's stopped mindin' the difference between a rabbit and an auld woman. I've coin, honest coin, a bed and board as long as ye need it, and the gratitude of a wee town wi' no one else tae ask."

He looked between them.

"So. What of it? Will ye take it on?"

>You may ask any questions you have, and specify anything else you would like one or more characters to do
>Questions can be generally asked and answered as a group. Actions should have a character specified.
>Majority wins for each character action. If only one person suggests an action for a given character, it will go ahead by default. In a tie, I will roll off.
>I will try to update at least once per day, but more when I have time. If every character has an action suggested, and at least four hours have passed, I may go ahead at any time.
>Please only roll when asked
>OOC questions are also allowed at any time

>>6456517
Shit. Well, thanks for letting me know. My IP is a bit unstable sometimes and I am away from my house right now.

>>6456518
Ask Zurham if there was a blood trail anywhere

>>6456518
>Question Zurham
Were there signs of fighting where the creatures vanished? Did the old woman carry anything to defend herself with?

>>6456526
>>6456537
Just a reminder that you can also suggest actions specific to other characters if you would like!

>>6456561
Too late, we are already too sentimental to our characters, there's no going back, I'll be very sad if Aller dies

>>6456518
>Question:
Is there anyone who might've seen or could identify THE CULPRIT?

>>6456526
>>6456537
>>6456573
Aller leaned back, one boot up on the rail, and did not look particularly concerned about anyone's grandmother.

"Blood," he said. "That's the thing, isn't it? Something that big goes off in the night, something bleeds. Was there a trail anywhere? Snares, pens, yard, any of it?"

"Some." Zurham's mouth thinned. "At the pen, aye. No' as much as ye'd think, mind. A smear, a spatter. Nothin' ye could follow past the fence."

"Not much blood for a hundredweight of pig."

"That's what I said tae Muller."

John set down the half-finished basket in his lap. He had not stopped weaving since he sat, and now that he had, the quiet was somehow worse.

"Signs of fighting," he said. "Where the things vanished. Was there struggle?"

"At the snares it's hard tae tell, ye ken. The beasts had been thrashin' in the wire half the night before whatever came for them. Orrin says there might've been prints that weren't rabbit nor fox, but he wasnae lookin' for it. Everyone reckoned it was a wolf or a bear, and left it at that." He turned the mug. "The pen's different. That sow fought. Mud all stirred tae soup."

"Tracks in the mud, then."

"Hoofprints. And bootprints."

Bagark, who had not spoken at all, made a low sound in his throat. Every head at the table turned.

"Whose boots?"

Zurham blinked at him. "Farmhands. The family. Who else would it—"

"You checked?"

"They're farmers, laddie, they were in and oot o' that pen all mornin' after—" He stopped. Something moved behind his eyes. "...No. No, I dinnae suppose anyone counted them. Nor would they ken how tae tell one man's boot from another in muck like that."

He was quiet a moment.

"But I'll tell ye this for nothin'. That pig was two hundredweight o' fightin' meat and it was dispatched and carried off between one squeal and the next. Muller heard the once, worked up his nerve, went out wi' a lantern, and there was nothin'. No beast born a' nature does that. And no *man* does it either."

>>6456587

From the far side of the table came a slow, thoughtful him... No, a buzz.

"The culprit," said Buzz, voice muffled through the netting and carrying an unsettling, droning quality no unlike his charges. "Someone saw. Someone always sees."

"If they did, they've no' come tae me."

"Old women see things." A pause; the swarm shifted on their shoulders. "Yours saw something."

"Was she armed?" asked Margaret softly. "Did she have a way to fight back?"

The dwarf's hands went flat on the table.

"She had her axe," he said. "Course she did. Dwarven steel, my grandfather's before it was hers. And a hat pin she kept sharp enough tae shame a dagger. Over a hundred year in this town and she never once went out that door unarmed, no' even tae the privy." His voice caught and steadied. "And we dinnae ken how she was taken. That's the worst o' it. Nae axe left behind, nae pin, nae blood. Just a noise in the yard and then nae nan."

He stood, scraping the stool back.

"The yard's twenty paces through that door. If ye think it'll help, I'll show ye it right now."

>Go with him to the yard
>Check the pen
>Head straight to the wood
>Ask/demand something first
>Suggest actions for any character, including ones not your own

>>6456589
Action for Maggie:
Go to where the monster took the woman to search for clues. A dwarf is way stronger and sturdier than a pig, she should have left some clue behind.
Pros like your group are better at being detectives than some blacksmith.
Maybe Maggie could detect something supernatural once she's there.
If nothing works, just lure the monster.

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>>6456589
Btw, this is Maggie's attire to protect herself from the sun. At night, caves, not too luminous indoors, etc. she wears her normal clothes.

>>6456589
>Acompany Maggie to where the old nan was taken and use FIGHTING experience to try and piece together what sort of scuffle transpired. All silent as a grave, of course. Even when swinging around a sword like she would have her axe.

>>6456617
Awesome art!

>>6456589
>>6456600
+1 this. Also kickass art

>>6456600
>>6456643
>>6456647
>Moving things along to keep a brisk pace, since most of the party seem to be in agreement about investigating.

The back door of the Grizzly Bear opened onto a yard of hard-packed earth, a woodpile, a rain barrel, and a low fence with the woods beyond it going grey in the afternoon light. A mere twenty paces, as promised. It looked like nothing at all.

Margaret went first. She had wrapped herself before stepping out, hood drawn low and heavy sleeves down over her hands, a brown bundle of cloth with two green "ears" standing out of the top of it and two enormous dark eyes in the shadow beneath. The daylight was not kind to her and she did not intend to suffer its interference in her work.

She raised the skull staff. The thing on the end of it woke slowly, the way a coal wakes. Green light came up out of the sockets and spilled down over the bone, and then the light kept going, unwinding off the skull in slow ribbons that did not drift the way smoke drifts but rather seemed to reach out gropingly. One of the farmhands who had followed them out made a noise and went back inside. Margaret paid him no mind. She swept the staff in a slow arc across the yard, watching the light rather than the ground, waiting to see whether it would lean, and what it would find.

John came out behind her, quiet as his untold victims' graves. He had left the basket on the table, to return to later. He walked the perimeter of the yard at a deliberate pace with his eyes down, and once he stopped, and drew his sword, and swung it in a short flat arc at nothing, the way an old woman might swing an axe at something coming out of the dark. He watched where the arc would have ended. Then he sheathed it and moved on. Nobody asked him what that was for. Behind the netting on the far side of the yard, Buzz had gone very still, and appeared to be taking notes.

Aller was already at the fence, running a thumb along the top rail and looking outward rather than down. Ways in. Ways out. Where a man (or something else) would go if he wanted the woods and did not want the road.

Bagark stood in the middle of it all with his arms folded and said nothing. This... was not his area of greatest expertise.

At the back, Buzz finally made his move: he let the swarm off his shoulders. They went up in a loose brown haze and spread across the yard in a way that was not quite random, and he stood beneath them with his head tilted, thinking. What takes a full-grown sow between one squeal and the next? What takes a dwarf, armed and experienced, just as swiftly? Something with the strength for it, or the numbers for it, or something that need neither do to an unknown edge. His own "livestock" were a good deal smaller, yes, but the principle of rooting out a honey-thief might well apply here, to this "hive." Something had come here, and fed, and left, and left the shape of itself behind in what it had disturbed.

>>6456692

None of them had been in this town longer than a few hours. None of them knew the ground, or the woods, or which of the marks in the dirt had been here a week.

But the light on the staff was leaning. The bees were buzzing. Each of them had been called to this cause. Together, they would bring an end to this nightmare.

>Rolls: five characters, five rolls needed. One each, please, but if a character's player (or someone else) hasn't rolled and it's been a while, feel free to roll a second one for them.

>Margaret: 3 dice (Witchcraft + Mogwai Witch Doctor + 1)

>John: 2 dice (Fighter + 1). Swords doesn't apply to reading a scene as such, but I'll allow Fighter for judging whether there was a struggle.

>Bagark: 2 dice (Fighter + 1), same reasoning.

>Aller: 4 dice (Sneaking + Cunning + Rogue + 1). You're looking for how something came and went, attacking and departing without being seen.

>Buzz: 2 dice (Nature Survival + 1). 3 if you're specifically after scent or residue with Alchemy, but I'd need an idea what sort of residue you expect to find, and why.

>Note on Qualities: one die for race OR class, not one for each. They're a single Quality. So Rogue can apply where Human doesn't, at least until we know whether we're dealing with a man.

Rolled 3, 2, 2 = 7 (3d6)

>>6456693
Rolling for Margaret

(Idea: I was thinking she could let a spirit possess the skull on her staff and get information from it. The success rolling determines how it goes. The dead are prone to vagueposting, riddles or nonsensical answers regardless of effectiveness, more as flavor)
>>6456643
>>6456647
Thanks frens. I still want to use the normal version more because that's how I am. But the covered is good for fast drawings, I must say.

Rolled 1, 6 = 7 (2d6)

>>6456693
Even if John can't locate the villain now, he at least knows a FIGHT is coming to this town. It always does.

>>6456702
>>6456720
I would like to encourage second rolls now if you want another update tonight.

Rolled 6, 5 = 11 (2d6)

>>6456693
I will roll for the Bagark.

Rolled 2, 4 = 6 (2d6)

>>6456693
Rolling for Buzz

Rolled 4, 5, 4, 4 = 17 (4d6)

>>6456693
rolling

>>6456693
Anyone else think we're dealing with a flying creature? A big one?

>>6456796
>>6456772
>>6456769
>>6456720
>>6456702
>Margaret: Partial Success.
>John: Critical Success.
>Bagark: Critical Success.
>Buzz: Success.
>Aller: Success.

Bagark found it first, which surprised no one more than Bagark.

He had not been looking. He had been standing with his arms folded in the middle of a yard full of people who seemed like they knew what they were doing, and his eye had drifted down, and there it was. Two shallow gouges in the hard earth, a hand's width apart, grass torn up at the edges. He grunted and pointed with his chin.

"She planted here."

John was across the yard before the sentence finished. He crouched, put his own boot beside one of the marks, looked along the line of them toward the fence, and stayed there a long moment.

"Not a swing," he said. "She set her weight forward. A thrust?"

"Wi' an axe?"

"No." John stood. "No hit. No blood."

"There *is* blood."

Everyone turned. Buzz had one gloved hand raised, and above the woodpile his swarm had drawn itself into a tight knot, a fist of bees hanging in the air over one particular flagstone, humming at a pitch that made the farmhands at the door shift their feet.

"Not much," Buzz said. "A few drops. They found it." A pause. The knot pulsed. "They don't like it. The bees say it's unnatural."

John went to the stone and looked at it and did not touch it.

"Then it isn't hers," he said quietly. "She was taken without bleeding. This is blood she *drew*." He straightened. "Which means she hit something. And this is all it gave up."

Aller had been leaning on the fence through all of it, and now he examined his fingernails.

"Hat pin," he reminded them.

Bagark's arms came unfolded. "She had the axe in her hand. You don't drop an axe to reach for a pin. She'd have had to *choose* it. Why?"

"Advantage." John's voice had not changed. "Something the pin could hurt that the axe could not."

Then, Maggie's skull screamed.

>>6456810
It came off the staff like a Far Eastern firework from its guiding stick, green light blowing out of the sockets in a rush, jaw hinged wide, a long ribbon of luminous tongue unspooling out of it and lashing at the air. Margaret did not flinch. Her eyes had gone the same greenish colour, shining through her mask's lenses. When she spoke her voice came layered under the shriek, the two of them saying it together, in synchronized syllables.

"Old," they said. "A foul taste. Life left too long in the vessel. Festering. Rotting at death's own doorway." The tongue curled. "But not dying."

The yard was very quiet.

"Right," said Aller, pushing off the fence. "Speaking of doors."

He walked to the gate, which was the only break in the fence line, and lifted the latch with one finger. It was already up.

"Someone came in this way. On foot, on their own legs, through a gate." He looked out across the lane. "Didn't leave this way, though. That's houses right there. Half a dozen of them, belonging to the burghers. You'd be jogging down the street past the front of a full tavern and across from every cobbler and laundry-maid with a screaming old dwarf granny under your arm."

"Unconscious," Bagark said.

"Fine. An unconscious old woman, who by all accounts weighs about as much as an anvil, past all the same peddler and drunks." Aller spread his hands. "Nobody saw a thing. So it walked in through that gate, and it went out over everyone's heads."

Maggie's eyes fluttered, and the green light sputtered. Aller, predictably, was the first one there to catch the mogwai girl as she fell. It seemed the spell had taken something out her, and it would be a while before she recovered. it might even take until evening.

What next?
>Guess the monster and prepare countermeasures?
>Ask further questions of Zurham or the others?
>Go to see Orrin the trapper and investigate the woods?
>Check out the pen where the sow was grabbed?
>Something else? remember, you can suggest ideas for any character's skillset!

File: sketch1787818180704.png (1.43 MB, 1536x1257)

1.43 MB PNG

I think it's some sort of corpse controlling parasite. Something small, that's why the pin was useful. It also explains why it can't be detected.
It probably was inside one of the farmers.
>>6456816
Maggie or whoever you feel able to come up with this
>Ask further questions of Zurham or the others?
Ask the dwarf if someone in the village has been acting weird. Maybe reuniting the farmers to interrogate them. The parasite is most likely gone but we can check if it's one or many.

I might be wrong.

>>6456816
"Perhaps it could have been some sort of flying creature? but the clues are too vague.. didn't the monster leave any traces?
If there is truly nothing to work with, I do have an idea.

We should set up a trap, something will have to be sacrificed,
but if we don't stop the monster now, it'll kill more people later.
Perhaps an old pig, or some animal that would have been sent for slaughter anyway?"


>>6456862
Lol you got confused, Aller is the rogue, buzz is the beekeeper.

>>6456816
Maybe you could include images with your posts, OP. At least one of the location they are investigating so we can understand better the crime scene. One slop image should suffice, characters are not even needed.

>>6456944
>One slop image should suffice
Retard, we have a thing called imagination.
Also, aren't you an artist? have you no standards? Or did you ask AI specifically to generate images that look realistic?

Op, don't listen to him, don't resort to fucking ai.

>>6456816
>Check out the pen where the sow was grabbed?
Prints. Ichor. Smells. The bees always know.
>>6456944
>>6456959
I'm gonna assume Gizmo just meant some random photo/stock image since yea, they're an artist. Please continue to not us AI, OP--there's plenty of scenery pics you can find with a google search if you wanna paint the scene a little finer!

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>>6456895
>Bring over Orrin to help Aller set up a trap for this thing
Unfortunately, baskets are only really good for trapping fish

>>6456959
It's a one post ID, probably just a troll using the name. Not like we're using trips since anyone can freely vote for any character. Though I agree with your sentiment, please don't use AI OP.

>>6456944
>>6456959
>>6456969
>>6456985
I don't really have a strong anti-AI opinion for non-paid art and non-profit projects like this. I am doing a lot of this on mobile or casually between other stuff, though. I am happy to clarify details OOC but don't really want to mess around with an image generator for this quest.

>>6456990
That is kinda of a bad sentiment to have in my opinion.
I think it's especially important to not use AI for things such as these,
because they are pure in a sense.

It is effort for no benefit other for than your soul,
if you make it "easier" by using AI to create ugly looking stuff, you are just disgracing something good.

All I am saying is, in my eyes, /qst/ is a uniquely beautiful place that cannot be replaced.

>>6456997
I am not planning to debate AI art ethics on a questing board lol. I will be updating soon.

>>6456999
>>6456997
Yes please. I'm no fan of AI but yea I agree, don't think we need to blow up the thread discussing it

>>6456862
>>6456895
>>6456969
>>6456985
Aller carried the mogwai girl inside. He did it without being asked, one arm under her knees and the other behind her shoulders, which for demihuman girl of her dimensions required less effort than her coat did. He seemed in no particular hurr, regardless.

Zurham cleared a room on the second floor, and Aller laid Maggie out on the bed with a care that would have been touching had he not, on straightening, made a small satisfied noise and adjusted his belt.

The others came up behind and gathered around the bed like mourners at a very small funeral.

Margaret's eyes came open. They went straight past every face in the room to the brown haze drifting near the ceiling.

"Aller," she said thickly. "If I get stung, I'll kill you."

"That's Buzz. Though if you'd like to threaten me, I'm told I take punishment very well."

She closed her eyes again.

"She's delirious, poor thing," Aller said to Buzz. "Mixing up our names."

"It's easy," said Bagark. "Bees buzz."

There was a pause while everyone looked at him.

"...What?"

They moved on.

Margaret pushed herself up on her elbows, hood down now, ears flat in the dim of the shuttered room. "Listen. I think I know what kind of thing it is. Something small. A parasite. It gets inside a body and drives it. That's why the pin mattered, a needle's the right tool for something that size, and it's why I found nothing, because there was nothing unnatural standing in that yard by then. It had already gone. It was probably wearing one of the farmers when it came through the gate."

"The bees will know," said Buzz.

Her ears went flatter. "The bees will not be knowing anything anywhere near me."

"Ichor. Prints. Smell. They always know." The swarm shifted approvingly.

"Say she's right," Aller said, studying the ceiling rather than any of them. "What then? We go downstairs and announce to a room of drunks that one of their neighbours might be a puppet? Half run. The other half find someone to blame, and there's a farmhand hanging from a tree by morning while the thing walks off in a different skin." He shook his head. "You don't hunt a thing by telling it you're hunting it. You give it something it wants."

"Bait," said Bagark.

"An old pig. A goat past its milking. Something bound for the pot anyway. We put it somewhere quiet, we sit in the dark, and we see what comes."

John had been silent by the door. "I can build."

Everyone turned.

"I build things." A pause. "Baskets, mostly. But baskets are only really good for trapping fish."

Aller and Bagark looked at one another.

"John," said Aller carefully. "What about building something that isn't a basket?"

John stared blankly. He looked at Aller the way a man looks at a sentence in a foreign language. Something behind his eyes attempted the idea and did not complete it.

"I'll fetch Orrin," he said at last. "The trapper. He'll know what kind of basket might work."

>>6457007
The agricultural hall (as they called the oversized and draughty barn where the local farmers had gathered) smelled of wet straw. There were four of them waiting in it, which in Crowsflight passes for a town meeting.

Muller, who had lost the sow and had opinions about it. A widow named Hesk, in her early forties but still with a severe sort of beauty, and more importantly the owner of three sheep and a chicken coop, and with no stated intention of parting with any of her animals. A cooper who had wandered in to listen and had not been invited. And Tam, whose goats went missing first, and who therefore felt he had already contributed his share to the cause, especially given the young and growing family he was to provide for.

They stood in a loose circle in the half-dark with their arms folded, making the noises men make when they know they are about to be asked for something.

"You want us to give you an animal," Muller said. "To feed to the thing that's been eating us out of house and home, and has taken Old Nana Gristmean."

"To catch it," said Aller.

"By feeding it?"

Aller rubbed his forehead. This was going to be a harder sell than he'd hoped...

>>6457013
The woodsman Orrin's cabin sat forty minutes up the ridge, and Orrin was in front of it skinning something small and fuzzy, and did not stand when they approached.

He was perhaps sixty, built like a bundle of sticks tied at the middle, with a grey beard gone yellow around the mouth and a hide coat repaired so many times it was mostly repair. He looked at John. He looked at Buzz, and at the bees, for considerably longer, and his expression did not change much except for raised eyebrows, but he stopped skinning.

"Dwarf sent ye."

"He did."

"Aye." He went back to the skinning. "Whole town's lost its head. I don't know what everyone's in such a state about, mind. Things go missin' out here. Wolf takes a lamb, cat takes a chicken. Been happenin' since before any of us. Ye don't see me runnin' down the hill wavin' me arms."

"Your snares were the first. You *did* report it."

"They were. I did." A pause; the knife worked once more. "Haven't lost a one since, though. Not a single catch, not in a fortnight. Whatever it was, it moved on from me."

He said it flatly, with no relief in it whatsoever, and reached for a rag, and added, "Found other feedin', I reckon."

Behind him, Buzz's swarm had drifted out over the yard.

"So what is it ye want, then?" Orrin asked.

"Your help to set a trap for whatever it is, so it doesn't continue it's feeding on people."

"...Aye." Orrin stopped his work again, and sighed, setting the knife down. "For what good it'll do ye."

>>6457019
>How does Aller work the barn? Charm, cunning, coin, or something else? Name a target or an angle if you have one; it changes which dice he rolls.
>Does Bagark back him, lean on them, or stay out of it?
>What do John and Buzz actually ask Orrin for, and how much do they tell him?
>Does Buzz use his bees to check Orrin or the others for parasites, as with Maggie's theory? Do anything else with them for now? Integrate them into the trap?
>Does Maggie have any questions or anything she wants to get up to from her bed? Does she stay there until evening, or force herself up to aid with preparations?

>>6457024
>Ask Orrin to show us his snares
And while we're walking there, tell him our theories on what it might be.

>>6457024
>Buzz scouts with THE BEES. ORRIN. HIS HOME. HIS SNARES. NONE WILL ESCAPE OUR PURVEY

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329 KB PNG

>>6457024
Maggie:
Wants to talk to the Dwarf. She thinks he's a soon to be victim. He must not be left alone. He must also be noticed of the parasite theory and forbidden of approaching his grandmother if he finds her alone. He must also not tell anyone about it.
She also doesn't want to be alone. She will go with the rest of the party but she won't help, only rest.
She'd also ask the dwarf if he can interrogate the families of the farmers that were with his grandma when she disappeared. To see if they behaved in a weird way or have been in an uncommon spot.

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528 KB PNG

Aller looks like this.

>>6457077
It's wrong to make him muscular...

>>6457077
Perfect. No notes

>>6457106
That is noted for how I describe him. Could I perhaps get your vote on the next action?
>How does Aller work the barn? Charm, cunning, coin, or something else? Name a target or an angle if you have one; it changes which dice he rolls.

>>6457031
>>6457071
>>6457076
Though of course anyone else can also weigh in on matters not directly related to their own characters as well, and it will help speed updates along.

>>6457106
I don't make femboys. I've had bad experiences with them.
I could try to do it later, as a matter of pride.
>>6457109
Thanks, eventually I'll have the whole gang.

>>6457111
If nobody posts an action, use this:
Charm. He uses his otherworldly beauty to bewitch the Orin.

>>6457115
But he's at the agricultural hall dealing with the people there, trying to persuade them to give up some livestock for bait.

roll for masturbation

>>6457119
I thought Orin was the barn.
Can someone step up so I can stop making a fool of myself?
Charm, use charm.

>>6457127
The woodsman Orrin is at his cabin. John and Buzz went there to ask for help with traps, and apparently to search him and his property with BEES. >>6457019

Aller and (by default) Bagark went to the ag-hall to get the other half of the trap ready, that being bait >>6457013

Maggie had to take a moment to recover, and it seems like your plan right now is to maybe warn Zurham about possible parasites and then to go with him to the hall to advance your parasite theory.

At the hall, though, there are three main parties to negotiate with: Muller (prize sow went missing, is suspicious of others) Widow Hesk (has sheep and chickens, seems neutral) and Tam (lost goats early on, has a young family to worry about). There's also just a cooper who wandered in and is hanging about.

What I want to know is who Aller wants to focus on. If you're going there with Zurham to interrogate them a little, it might be good to know who you're targeting, too. Or if you want to go to Orrin's cabin and investigate, that's also cool. Just let me know.

>>6457136
>>6457077
>>6457106
>>6457031
>>6457071
Any of you can also suggest who Aller might want to focus on and how, or what Bagark can do to help, or make suggestions for one another's characters. This is why I want to discourage people from treating this like a skirmish or RPG. Nobody owns any character. Everyone can vote on everyone.

>>6457136
Cooper- Charm in the sense of being a bro, try to see what's he up to and then we'llsee. If he's there, it must mean something. Don't reveal too much and act more ignorant that you really are.

>>6457142
>>6457071
>>6457031
Maggie's room was dim because she had made it dim, shutters drawn against an afternoon that had done her no favors, and Margaret lay in it feeling small.

That was the intolerable part. Not the weakness. The smallness. She had let something speak through her and it had cost her an afternoon in a stranger's bed while men she barely knew went out and did the work. She was *not* a womanlet. She was a witch doctor of the Mogwai, an adventurer, and she had work to do!

The door opened. Zurham put his head round it with a cup of something in his hand and an expression of careful hospitality.

"Just seein' if ye—"

Margaret came off the bed, crossed the room on legs that very nearly failed to hold her, took a fistful of his beard, and pulled his face down to hers.

The cup fell, and did not survive.

"Listen," she said, low and fast, and her breath was still short as she was. "Soemthing is out there, and it's in people! Whatever took your grandma came through your gate on someone else's legs. It might be wearing your neighbor. It might be wearing your 'nan.'" Her fingers tightened in the beard. "It might come for you, because you're hers, and it knows this house. Don't be alone. Don't tell anyone what I've told you. And if you find your nan, if she comes walking up that lane and calls you by name, you do not go to her. Do you understand me?"

Zurham's eyes were very wide and very close.

"...Ye wan' I should fear me nan?"

"Fear whatever's inside her."

He straightened slowly, and she had to let go of the beard, and he stood there stroking it back into shape and looking at this small green thing swaying slightly on her feet in the middle of his guest room.

Six generations. Never once failed them. The sign had called for what the town needed, and what the sign had sent was a wobbly-legged eastern demoness with a screaming skull on a stick. Maybe this wasn't what he expected, but Zurham Gristmean was not the sort of dwarf to argue with the sign.

"Aye," he said. "Right. Aye."

"Good. Take me to the hall."

>>6457155
The agricultural hall was a large, drafty barn with delusions, and by the time they reached it, the negotiation was a quarrel.

"—and I'm sayin' I don't know who was in my pen that night," Muller said, to the room and Tam, "and neither do any of you, so don't stand there lookin' at me like I've lost my wits for asking who was where."

"You're asking who took your pig," Tam said. "Say it plain."

"I'm askin' who was where."

Widow Hesk folded her arms. "You can both stop. Nobody's taking one of my sheep to avenge your pig. I had nothing to do with it!"

"It'd be one animal, Missus..."

"It'd be one of four, and I've no one but me. No husband, no sons. I work that patch myself, and my winter food comes off it."

"Just for yourself, though!" Tam threw up a hand. "You've no children to feed! I've three under seven and another in the spring."

"And none to help me work."

"None to *feed* neither."

Aller had stood aside for several minutes, wearing the look of a man watching a horse race with no money on it. He had come with a plan involving reasonable people. In its wreckage his attention drifted, as attention will, to the phrase no husband and the woman it belonged to.

"Widow Hesk, was it? How tragic. Maybe we can talk this out, just you and me?"

"Boots," Maggie whispered to the dwarf. "You said there were bootprints in Muller's pen. Look at boots. Every man here. What's on them, how they're worn, whether they match that mud or carry it. If the men in them act strangely. You know these people. You'll notice what I can't."

Zurham nodded. He went one way, the mogwai the other, intercepting Aller. In her full daylight rig, hood up, sleeves down, staff planted with each stride and the skull on it swinging, she commanded attention. It was Bagark who got to her before she got to their rogue, though.

"Who's that he's talking to?" she asked the half-orc.

"Widow. Four sheep, chickens. Big chest."

"Right. Who else is here?"

"Pig man. Angry. Thinks it was one of the others." A jerk of the chin. "Goat man. Three children. Won't give up anything." He paused. "And him."

Maggie followed his thumb.

There was a fourth man near the side door, unremarkable, a cooper by his apron, who had drifted a good deal closer to the exit over the last several minutes and had arranged his face into the specific boredom of a man who came for the entertainment and has decided the entertainment is over.

"Who's that," said Margaret.

"Dunno. Been here the whole time. Doesn't own anything we need."

The witch doctor crossed the floor, took Aller by the sleeve mid-sentence, and towed him away from the widow Hesk.

"Him," she said. "The cooper. Now."

"I was working!"

"You were flirting."

"Those are the same thing!" Aller protested. "And I'll point out he doesn't have any animals. That's the entire reason we came here. Animals!"

"No animals on the outside," Margaret muttered.

Bagark was already moving to put himself between the cooper and the door, just in case.

>>6457158
Up the ridge, John was having the best afternoon of his life.

"And this one?"

"Deadfall. Weight on a trigger stick, ye set it like so." Orrin crouched and showed him. "Bait goes here."

"There's no weaving."

"No."

"But this one." John had already moved to the next thing on the line, a cone of split withies narrowing to a throat of sharpened points. "This is woven."

"Aye, that's a funnel trap. Goes in, can't come back out past the spines."

John looked at it for a long moment with something almost like emotion.

"It's a basket," he said quietly.

"It's a trap."

"It's a basket that's a trap."

Orrin decided not to pursue this. They walked the line. It was, as he had said, entirely intact: eight snares, all set, all sprung on nothing, no catch in a fortnight and no sign of anything having tried. The wire was fresh-oiled. The man kept his line better than most men keep their houses.

"We think it flies," John said, as they walked. " It came into the yard on legs, through the gate, and it went out over the rooftops with a full-grown dwarf woman." He turned a snare over in his hands. "What do you weave for something that flies?"

Orrin was quiet for a few steps.

"Nets, I guess?" he said.

Buzz had not followed the others. He had stayed in the yard, at the edge of it, and let the swarm off his shoulders in a wide slow spiral, and now they were everywhere: over the drying racks, along the woodpile, in under the eaves of the cabin, threading the gap beneath the floorboards, working the seams of the place the way they would work a hive that had gone wrong. Because that was the thing about parasites, and Buzz knew a great deal about parasites. A mite does not sit on the outside where you can see it. It goes into the brood. It goes into the heart of the comb, into the cells where the young are, and it eats there quietly while everything above continues to look exactly like a hive.

He was looking for two things. The smell of the blood from the yard, that wrong old smell his bees had refused to like.

And anything at all that had burrowed in.

>>6457161
>Aller: 3 dice (Cunning + Human Rogue + 1) to work out what the cooper's actually doing here. Seduction doesn't apply; he's not charming a bored tradesman, he's picking him apart while pretending not to.

>Bagark: 3 dice (Intimidation + Half-orc Fighter + 1) to make sure nobody leaves this barn until it's settled. Physical presence and the threat of it both apply.

>Margaret: She's allowed to act, but she is running on nothing. Any roll she makes this scene has its Degree of Success reduced by 1, and if she rolls at all she'll carry a penalty into the evening as well.

>John: 2 dice (Craft + 1) to learn enough to build something useful for the trap plan. Success means he can build a net-trap.

>Buzz: 3 dice (Nature Survival + Bee Tactics + 1) for the swarm to search the cabin, the yard, etcetera.

Rolled 3, 1, 2 = 6 (3d6)

>>6457163
Roll for Aller to persuade Cooper, he could play good cop, Bagard bad cop.

Rolled 1, 4, 3 = 8 (3d6)

>>6457163
Roll for bad cob Bagard. He shouldn't be THAT aggressive.

Rolled 6, 4, 5 = 15 (3d6)

>>6457163
BEE seein' ya....