>>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.

>>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....

Rolled 5, 3 = 8 (2d6)

>>6457163
Rolling, rolling, rolling,

>>6457172
>>6457173
>>6457176
>>6457228
>I will assume Maggie is keeping it low key and go ahead...

In the barn, the shouting had settled into muttering: Crows flight in uneasy truce.

Aller had the cooper backed into a companionable corner of it, leaning on a post, radiating exhaustion.

"I'll tell you what I thought adventuring would be," he said. "I thought there'd be a barrow. Some gold. A girl. Instead I've spent my afternoon in a barn haggling over a sheep." He shook his head. "For a dwarf's nan. And she's so old... I mean, maybe it's crass to say, but *that's* what they put up an adventurer sign for?"

The cooper snorted. "That's Crowsflight."

"You've no skin in this, though, hn? No animals to offer."

"None."

"Would you?"

A shrug.

"So why stand about listening to it? Free entertainment.?"

A pause, and then, more comfortably, because the leather-clad outsider was clearly no friend of the town either: "And I'll not pretend I'm heartbroken. Dwarves were never my favorite. Right cheap family. Nana Gristmean wasn't the worst of them or nothing, but even so..."

Aller laughed. "Gods, no. Try getting a straight deal out of one. Or a refund!"

"You're telling me.'

"Sounds like you've history."

"Some."

"Right, right." Aller nodded along, easy, sympathetic, a man among men. "So you'd say you've got a grudge against him, then? Gristmean?"

The cooper's face went through several things at speed. He came off the post fast, sideways, straight for the side door, and the side door had a half-orc in front of it.

Bagark did not hit him. He simply stepped into the gap, unhooked the axe, let it hang from one hand at his side, and made a low sound in his chest with his lips slightly back from his teeth. The cooper's boots skidded on the straw. He went backward two steps, three, and sat down hard on nothing.

The barn had gone silent. Muller, Tam, Hesk, all of it, every face turned. Aller crouched in front of him, unhurried, and drew a coil of rope off his belt.

"Now, then," he said pleasantly. "You can talk to me here, like a man with nothing to hide, in front of your neighbours." He let the rope play out through his fingers. "Or I can tie you to that post, and you'll talk anyway, and everyone will watch me make it happen. Genuinely, either suits me. I've had a long day."

The cooper's mouth opened.

Across the hall, a small voice rose over everything, thin and ferocious.

"CHECK HIM FOR PARASITES!"

>>6457271
Up the ridge, John had solved it.

"Rope through the corners," he said, to nobody. "Weight on the edges. You throw it *across*, not at, and it opens."

He threw it across the yard. It opened.

"Then down." He hauled the line back and the net came in fast and tangled and dragging. "Then this."

He drew his sword and put it through the middle of the empty net. Then again. Then a third time, faster, and a fourth, working the point in short economical stabs into the ground where something's belly would be, and the sound coming out of the bucket helmet was low and steady and pleased.

He gathered the net up and did the whole thing again.

Orrin had stopped pretending to sharpen the knife some time ago. He watched the armored warrior throw, haul, and stab, and throw, and haul, and stab, and chuckle in that flat metal way, and he shivered.

This unsettling ritual kept the homeowner occupied as Buzz and his bees went about their own business.

They came in off the treeline all at once, the loose swarm pulling tight into a moving column, and Buzz followed them without a word past the drying racks, past the woodpile, forty paces up into the trees behind the cabin.

The smell was the first thing. The same smell off the flagstone in the dwarf's yard. Old. Wrong. Sitting in the air under the branches.

The tree above him was bent. Not broken by weather. The upper limbs were bowed outward and snapped back in a rough circle, the way a branch goes when the same great weight comes down on it day after day, or night after night, and the bark on the biggest bough was worn smooth in two long grooves.

Under it, the ground offered up other clues: Bones.

Small bones, mostly, rabbit and fox and suxh. But also a few big ones, cracked open lengthwise, and the wide flat plate of a pelvis that had belonged to no small game, and a jaw with a pig's flat molars still seated in it.

And feathers. Black ones, everywhere, trodden into the leaf mould and hanging in the low branches. Buzz crouched and turned one over with a gloved finger. Not a pinion, not torn out at the shaft the way they come out in a fight. Small ones. Soft. The idle sort a bird sheds while it sits and preens and looks down at a house.

There were a great many of them.

Something big. Something with feathers. He had known birds with feathers like that back home, the honey-hawks that came for his hives, but none so large or with plumage so dark.

Forty paces down the slope, through the trunks, he could see the cabin, and the yard, and the woodpile, and the old man standing by his door. Buzz straightened and looked across at John. John stopped mid-throw, net still in hand.

Buzz did not point, or speak, or move his hands. He tilted his mask-clad head very slightly toward Orrin.

>For this vote, we'll all cast a vote for what John and Buzz should do: discussion this with Orrin, grab him in the net and drag him to the barn, gather up evidence and leave to discuss before making a move, something else?

>>6457278
>gather up evidence and leave to discuss before making a move
Playing it safe for now.
I suppose it was just a bird after all. Man, the parasite theory had too much sense...

Slow one today... We'll go ahead with this later if nobody else votes before then, and hope players trickle back.

>>6457278
>BUZZ: Discuss with Orrin.
If he is complicit, he will not get far.

>>6457278
>>6457425
>Help Buzz discuss with Orrin
John's not going to say much, but he has a net ready. Just in case.

>>6457293
>>6457425
>>6457429
>Two votes for confronting him now, one for gathering evidence and leaving. Going with the majority. Rolls at the bottom.

Buzz came down the slope out of the trees. John met him halfway across the yard and they closed on the cabin door together, the swarm drawing in tight around Buzz's shoulders, the net gathered in John's hands.

Orrin looks between them. "Is somethin' wrong...?"

"Don't run," Buzz said.

"I wasn't—"

"Please run," said John.

Orrin's eyes went to him.

"I've only thrown it at the ground." John turned the bundle, checking the weights sat right. "I'd like to see it work on something that moves."

The old man's jaw worked. "I don't know what it is ye think ye've found, but..."

"Bones. Pig bones, like Muller's missing some. A tree sat in so long the bark's worn through in two lines."

"Deer bed down. Owls nest. That's *woods*, that is."

Buzz held up his hand. Between two gloved fingers, a single black feather, small and soft and shed at rest.

"No mere owl," he hummed.

The swarm rose off his shoulders and hung there.

"There were many like this. The bird didn't come here once or twice." He turned the feather slowly. "It smells the way the blood in the dwarf's yard smelled."

Orrin said nothing.

"So don't dance a deceitful dance with me." The humming climbed a step. "The bees take umbrage."

>Social contest. You're attacking Orrin's Mind; when it hits zero he yields and talks.
>Buzz: 2 dice (Intimidation + 1). He's pressing.
>John: 2 dice (Fighter + 1). He isn't saying much, but everyone in this yard has watched him rehearse.
>Same Aspect, so damage stacks. Orrin's Defense comes off each Degree of Success before it lands.
>Say so before rolling if you'd rather play it differently. Buzz could reason instead of threaten; John could put the net down.

In addition...

>>6457435
Down in the barn, the cooper had a name, and the name was Cooper.

"His *father* was a cooper too, and his father's father before," Hesk said. "It's tradition."

"Tragic," said Aller, cinching the last turn around the post. He stepped back to admire it. "Bit of a lattice, isn't it. Almost decorative! You could hang a plant off that."

He glanced over his shoulder at the widow and winked.

Hesk went a colour she had not gone in some years and looked hard at the floor.

Margaret's cheeks puffed out cutely. "*Focus.*"

The room had drawn in around the post: Muller with his arms crossed, Tam near the door, Gristmean hovering at the edge with his eyes on everybody's feet. Cooper sat in the straw with his wrists behind him and his chin up, and the defiance had not quite gone out of him yet.

"I've done nothing," he said. "Ask any of them."

"We're going to ask *you*," said Aller.

Bagark moved in behind him and blocked out the light.

>Social contest. You're attacking Cooper's Mind; when it hits zero he breaks and talks.
>Aller: 3 dice (Cunning + Human Rogue + 1). He's picking the man apart, not charming him.
>Bagark: 3 dice (Intimidation + Half-orc Fighter + 1). Standing there is doing most of the work.
>Same Aspect, so damage stacks. Cooper's Defense comes off each Degree of Success first.
>Margaret can ask him as many questions as she likes for free. If she wants to *roll* for anything, she can, but she is still running on nothing: reduced Degree of Success now, and a penalty carried into the evening. Her call.
>What do you want asked? Name the questions in your post and I'll have them put to him.

>>6457435
John may do many things, but the one thing he isn't going to do is put that net down.

Rolled 6, 2 = 8 (2d6)

>>6457442
And for some reason my roll didn't go through, must have typo'd

Rolled 4, 4 = 8 (2d6)

>>6457435
Buzz roll. If aggressive approach was chosen, let's go with that.
Buzz should get an extra roll for BEES

Rolled 6, 5, 1 = 12 (3d6)

>>6457436
Aller roll.

Margaret action. If she's got it all wrong, let her embarras herself for good.
She says she understands everything and refers as him as a parasite. She asks him in an awkward way to show himself and to tell her how he changes bodies.

Rolled 3, 3, 1 = 7 (3d6)

>>6457436
Roll for Bagark

>>6457479
Cute!

>>6456985
This is good, too. Are these original?

>>6457470
>>6457465
>>6457462
>>6457443
>>6457442
I'll say no to the bee bonus. Bee Tactics is already useful for a lot of stuff, and if the bees get their own die every time Buzz says or does anything, he ends up a little hax.

>John: 6. Critical Success, 4 degrees.
>Buzz: 4. Success, 2 degrees.

Orrin's Mind: 5 HP, 1 Def. Minus his Defense on each, that's 3 and 1. He's down to 1 and he yields, mostly.

Orrin sat down on his own chopping block. He put the knife on the ground first, as a show of surrender.

"The Night Hawk," he said. "That's what I call it. Came in the spring. Hungry as sin, I reckon, or it wouldn't have bothered with my line. Imagine, a thing that size pickin' at rabbits." He rubbed his mouth. "But it did, so of course I put an arrow in it."

"And?"

"And nothin'. Nothin' at all. It looked at the shaft stickin' out of it, and then it looked at me." His hands were not steady. "It came for me that night. And I talked it out of it."

John's head turned very slightly.

"Talked?" asks Buzz.

"Aye."

"It speaks?"

"It speaks."

The two adventurers looked at each other for a moment over the top of the old man's head.

"So you gave it the dwarf's grandmother," John said.

"No!" Orrin came half off the block. "No. Goats. Tam's goats and a lamb of Hesk's, and I'm not proud, I've not slept right since, but it was them or me and I chose them and I'll answer for it. Goats for my life, and it left my snares alone a few nights after. That was the whole of it."

"And the pig."

"I don't know about the pig!" He said it too loud, and then again, quieter. "I woke and it was up there in the tree with the thing already opened up. T'wasn't my doin', but what was I supposed to do, climb up and take it back off the bloody thing?"

"Who else knows?" John asked.

No response.

"Somebody told it where to go. Someone targeted the Gristmean's inn." From the darkness within his helm, John stared the woodsman down. "It knew an offering was waiting. How is it called?"

Orrin looked at the net in John's hands, and at the bees, and at the trees behind his cabin, and it was clear enough which of the three frightened him.

"I'll not say."

"You must."

"I *won't.*" There was nothing left in his voice but exhaustion. "You can put me in that thing and drag me down the hill and hang me off the ag-hall roof, and I'll not say, because you'll be gone in a week and it'll still be up that tree. And because I gave my word." He wiped his face. "All I'll say is... Well, a man says things when he's drinking, and I've done a deal of drinking since the Night Hawk came."

>>6457512
Yessir, John only deserves the best.

>>6457514

Meanwhile, back in town...

>Aller: 6. Critical Success, 4 degrees.
>Bagark: 3. Partial Success, 1 degree.

[green[Cooper's Mind: 4 HP, 1 Def. That's 3 and 0. He breaks.

Bagark's partial gets him the result and a small cost. Nobody in that barn is going to forget what they watched.[/green]

It should be said that the people of Crowsflight had never seen a half-orc lean on a neighbor before, nor a tiny demon girl in a spooky robe shriek at a bound man about worms. Muller had gone quiet. Tam and the family had drifted nearer the door. Whatever Cooper had done, he was a part fo their community, and this was not sitting well.

"REVEAL YOURSELF," Margaret was saying, "YOU PARASITIC WORM—"

She had got hold of a stick. She was winding up with it when a hand the size of a dinner plate closed on the other end.

"No," said Bagark, and lifted her off the ground by the back of the robe.

Aller stepped smoothly into the gap.

"What she means," he said, warm as bathwater, "is that you're being parasitic, with how you're acting right now. These people want this behind them. They want to know they can trust the man who makes their..."

"Barrels," Bagark supplies.

"Right." The rogue crouched. "You're feeding off all our *limited* good will, friend. That's all she's saying."

"That is not what I'm saying—"

"So tell us the truth, and we'll all go home."

Cooper broke like a dropped jug.

"Orrin!" It came out in a rush. "It's Orrin, up the ridge. We were drinking, and he told me he could call this... Demon-bird down. Something terrible, and he had a whistle for it, a special one, and I laughed at him, I thought he was snozzled out of his skull." His chin was wet. "And then the sow went. And I stopped laughing, and I've been frightened of him since, and that's the whole of it, I swear on my life!"

Aller patted his cheek, stood, and left him tied to the post.

"Thoughts?"

"You like tying people up too much," said Margaret, still airborne.

"It's better," said Bagark. "Killing a giant demon-bird is worth telling the tribe about. Nobody sings about curing worms."

Aller pinched the bridge of his nose. "I meant about his story."

"Oh." Bagark set Margaret down. "He's lying."

"Obviously lying," she agreed.

They dragged Cooper back to the Grizzly Bear, where Zurham put his face in his hands.

"I cannae believe it," he said. "Me dear an' loovely ol' nan's been ett by a baird."


>Night's coming, and it hunts at night. Decide:
>Who do you lean on for the whistle, Cooper or Orrin? Either, both, neither?
>Bait: livestock, or one of these two men? If livestock, whose animal are you taking, and how are you getting it?
>Where do you set it? The town, or the woods near Orrin's cabin where it already comes?
>Or do you bar the doors, sit tight, and hunt for the roost by daylight instead? Maggie's back on her feet and would like it noted that she does not enjoy the sun.
>Write in your proposed plans and actions!

>>6457524
>Go back to the tavern to ask about what Orrin was saying to see if he can get more information about the bird.
John is getting excited for a FIGHT and preparing for it. If he sees the party he'll tell them what he knows. He could care less about Orrin now that he spilled. Things are all looking good.

>>6457524
The bees politely suggest we shake both fools down for the whistle. A prudent and productive use of our time... and bees are nothing if not prudent and productive.

Buzz defers to the bees.

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>>6457524
>Who do you lean on for the whistle, Cooper or Orrin? Either, both, neither?
Both, I suppose.
>Bait: livestock, or one of these two men? If livestock, whose animal are you taking, and how are you getting it?
One of the widow's animals. Aller can make her jealous of Maggie, she'll try to best her "love rival" by giving Aller an animal. If it doesn't work, use Maggie as bait.
>Where do you set it? The town, or the woods near Orrin's cabin where it already comes?
>Write in your proposed plans and actions!
Also persuade the two men with unintentional charm. Once it's dark enough, Maggie can take off her coat. She doesn't like the coat because it's heavy and hot. Then she can try to give the two men a scolding, still thinking they are bugged. She tells them that they have no shame, asks them why can't they resort to predation like honorable lifeforms and how wonderful the world would be if humanoid races and parasites worked together.
This should work unless they are widowchads.

>>6457524
There's also an option of spilling water on Maggie and then using the Mogwai she spawns as bait. They are just normal Mogwai, not human like.
That would be cheesing it though. Maggie doesn't like to spawn critters but the fur balls come from her furry bits.

>>6457562
>>6457566
>>6457667
>>6457670

Margaret stood on a chair to look Cooper in the eye.

Orrin sat beside him, grey and miserable, while Zurham hovered behind the bar, fists clenched in his beard.

"You should be ashamed," Maggie said.

"I never called the bird," said Cooper.

Orrin cringed.

"That is not the point!" Margaret snapped. "You fed it. Bargained with it. You saw the horror in the sky and decided someone else's animals were an acceptable price for your cowardly lives."

They stared at the floor.

"It was them or me," Orrin muttered.

Margaret glared beneath her too-wide hood, fists atop the skull crowning her staff. "Two men with more guilt than sheep," she declared. "Next time you're tempted by a whistle and a deal, remember: it could be your nan next."

"I never called it for anyone's nan…" Orrin mumbled.

Cooper, red-faced, began to protest, but neither man had much fight with the half-orc and masked menaces present.

"You've got no right to grab people and press them like this!"

"That's what a parasite would say."

"I'm not a—"

"You are behaving like one."

Buzz leaned closer, his swarm gathering in a dark cloud around his helmet.

"The bees suggest we place both men beneath a net," he said. "If the Night Hawk comes, we shall learn whether it wants their flesh, their whistles, or what is inside them."

"Wait, stop!" shouted Cooper.

"Please no," moaned Orrin.

"Excellent," said John, hefting the bundled net. "Then hurry and offer us something else to use as bait."

He marched out before anyone could stop him.

Margaret was not finished.

"This is what I mean." She swept her staff at the room. "None of you understand harmony. A parasite takes and gives nothing back. Imagine how beautiful the world would be if everyone shared resources instead, like symbiosis."

She looked down, thinking. "I could make bait right now... a dozen by tomorrow morning, from my furry bits."

Silence.

"From your—" Bagark stopped.

"My furry bits, yes. Little mogwai." She said it as though it were ordinary.

Every male in the room found somewhere else to look. Zurham became fascinated by a glass. Cooper seemed to reconsider the net.

"We are not doing that," said Aller.

"You're right, I have a better plan!" Margaret's ears pricked. "We are going to the widow's farm."

"...Are we."

"You will walk me there." She hopped down, wrapped an arm around his waist, and hugged him close. "Hesk sees us. She decides she does not care for me and wants to impress you. She gives you a sheep."

"Wait—"

Margaret seized his wrist. Though Aller was a grown man and she barely reached his ribs, he came off his feet like laundry off a line. He caught the doorframe with one hand before being dragged out at speed.

Outside, in the last light, Widow Hesk had come to investigate. What she saw was this:

"—and if you asked me," Margaret was saying with precise volume, one hand on Aller's chest, "I'd give you as many as you liked. Dozens. Little furry ones. All for you, *dearest.*"

Aller's expression had gone far away.

"Dozens," he repeated. "I'm *very* generous."

Hesk's mouth thinned. Behind her, three villagers stopped working.

"...Is the little one offering to have his children?" one whispered.

"I think she's offering to sacrifice them," said another.

>Rolls, please. Say who you're going for where it matters.
>Buzz: 2 dice (Intimidation + 1). Pick a target, Cooper or Orrin.
>Bagark: 3 dice (Intimidation + Half-orc Fighter + 1). Same, pick one.
>John: 2 dice (Craft + 1) to set the ambush.
>Aller: 3 dice (Seduction + Human Rogue + 1).
>Margaret: 2 dice (Mogwai Witch Doctor + 1). She has no social skill on her sheet, but mogwai apparently have a thicc thighs.
>Anyone can roll for anyone. If a player hasn't shown up, take their character.

Rolled 2, 1 = 3 (2d6)

>>6457786
>Buzz will learn what Cooper knows.

Rolled 1, 4, 6 = 11 (3d6)

>>6457786
Aller roll
He should be able to say whatever the widow needs to hear to get into competitive mode. I think.

Rolled 4, 5 = 9 (2d6)

>>6457786
Maggie roll
Dunno what can she do if no men here find womanlets with thick thighs hot. Maybe the possibility of being gutted by a zombie bird is affecting their libido.

>>6457828
>>6457802
>>6457798
We're a ways off from my next update window, so it's okay to leave some for the others for now.

Rolled 5, 5 = 10 (2d6)

>>6457786
FINALLY, John gets to prepare for a proper FIGHT!

>>6457829
Shid, sorry

>>6457837
Not a problem. In fact, it may be time for that roll for Bagark.

>>6457831
>>6457796
From anyone who wants to and is around.

Rolled 5, 5, 6 = 16 (3d6)

Bagark goes for Orrin.
>>6457915
Said, I shouldn't have deleted it. Such a good roll.

>>6457921
>>6457796
>>6457798
>>6457802
>>6457831

>Buzz: Partial success, and his target's mind HP is already low.

Cooper's sweat had a smell to it now: a stink of doom, guilt and fear. He eyed the bees buzzing about him warily, and winced when they settled on him. he shook his head at first, but a single sharp sting reminded him why this was a bad idea.

"It's not my fault the dwarf's nan came out instead," he snapped, and heard it land, and tried to grab it back. "Not that I—"

But it was too late: it was clear to everyone who the culprit was, including to his unwitting co-conspirator. Orrin made a sound like something tearing and started rocking on the bench.

Bagark's hand came down on his shoulder, heavy, final. "He'll pay for his. You're not going to make it better by staying quiet, but you can still save your own honor."

>Bagark: Critical success. Orrin breaks.

"There's no whistle to hand over," he said, and made a single sharp noise through his pursed lips. "There's a special pattern and tone. "I can't do it at night, or it'll come a-swoopin' on down. But... But I'll do it for ya'."

Cooper's eyes widened. Realizing he was found out, and mouth was already forming the shape of it.

>Due to the critical, Bagark sees this coming

The half-orc's huge fist closed around his throat before the first note left him.

"Try that again," he said, "and you're the bait."

John came back in with the net over his shoulder and a the hangdog posture of a a man who'd solved a puzzle he didn't enjoy the answer to.

"No good?" Bagark asked.

"No axe out there," John answer sadly. "I just realized what the means: Gistmena's grandmother still had it when the bird took her. She was alive, and holding on."

"Catching works as well as killing. Better." Buzz's head tilted toward Cooper. "And we have our bait now bait."

The door opened again.

"No need for desperate measures," said Aller, a lamb tucked under one arm, Widow Hesk on the other.

>Aller: Critical success on Operation Jealous MILF!

"Where's the little one?" Bagark asked.

>...And a success for Margaret, too, whose plan it was!

Margaret came in behind them with two men trailing her, robe gone, attention very much not gone, both apparently engaged in the serious work of cheering up a woman who'd just been "dumped."

"She's going to use your children as bait," Hesk hissed, gripping Aller tighter.

Both men tilted their heads to appreciate the sight of Maggie strutting smugly inside.

"Yeah," said one unashamedly, "we're not in it for the family-way, Missus Hess."

>You have bait, a man willing to summon the Night hawk, and the culprit
>John gets a bonus die on the ensnaring attempt, for the practice, and you now have reason to believe you might save Gristmean's nan.
>Where do you set the ambush? The yard, the tree behind Orrin's cabin, or somewhere else?
>Anything to add to the plan before it's locked in?

>>6457929
>Where do you set the ambush? The yard, the tree behind Orrin's cabin, or somewhere else?
The tree behind Orrin's cabin. Looks like a good place for an ambush, familiar for the bird and with enough places to hide.
>Anything to add to the plan before it's locked in?
It might be a good idea to set the bird on fire if it's really a zombie.

>>6457929
>>6457942
+1 to this. Seems like the good way to go about it. I say we add BEES to scout for the beast's approach... and if it is indeed undead have some SLIP INTO ITS FLESH for easy tracking...

>>6457942
+1 to this. John will go wherever he's told to, but once the bird is caught all bets are off. It's killing time.

>>6457942
>>6458034
>>6458142
The ambush would be set beneath the bent tree behind Orrin’s cabin, where the Night Hawk already came to feed and roost. Familiar ground, familiar prey, and enough darkness for five adventurers to hide in.

Cooper was left in Crowsflight with Zurham Gristmean.

“Keep him where ye can see him,” Bagark told the dwarf.

“Aye,” said Zurham, who had not taken his eyes off Cooper since the man’s confession.

Margaret had one final suggestion.

“If it is undead,” she said, “we ought to be ready to set it on fire.”

The mogwai girl’s two new admirers hurried off to find oil, kindling, and anything else that might burn hot enough to destroy a flying corpse. They bickered as they went.

“I'll get lamp oil!”

“Idiot, pitch is what we need!”

“I'll be right back, cutie!"

"Wait for me, Maggie!"


The lamb was less enthusiastic about the arrangement. Aller carried it under one arm while walking beside Widow Hesk. He had one hand around her waist and was speaking softly into her ear.

“Stay here,” he told her. “When this is over, your conquering hero will return to you.”

“I'll be waiting,” Hesk said, face flushed.

“I am nothing if not reliable.”

Shifting the lamb slightly despite bleats of protest, Aller dipped Hesk backward as for a kiss.

For one splendid moment, there was only moonlight, romance, and the distant bleating of doomed livestock.

“Is it killing time yet?” John asked.

Aller’s expression fell, the mood spoiled.

>>6458180
The woods behind Orrin’s cabin were dark, in spite of the brightness of the moon. The bent tree waited above the feeding ground, its bark polished smooth. No bird yet waited on the tremendous perch.

John and Bagark took position beneath the branches, the net spread between them and weighted edges gathered in their hands. John had checked the knots twice. Then a third time.

“Throw across,” he murmured.

“Then down,” said Bagark.

“Then stab.”

Bagark looked at him. John looked back. Both nodded: this was what fighters were born for.

The lamb was tied beneath the tree. It protested the arrangement with increasing volume. Aller then took cover behind a fallen trunk, dagger drawn.

Margaret crouched behind a root, wrapped against the night air. Her skull staff rested across her knees. The skull’s eye sockets held a faint green glow, barely visible beneath the trees. She murmured to the spirits.They murmured back. At her feet: bottles of lamp-oil, ready to hurl and set ablaze. Behind her: a barrel of pitch.

Buzz stood at the edge of the clearing. The bees scattered from his shoulders in every direction, vanishing into the branches, the undergrowth, and the sky above. Some went toward the ridge. Others spread around the clearing to watch for movement.

“No escape,” Buzz whispered.

>>6458186
Orrin stood beside the lamb. For a moment, he wavered. Then he raised two fingers to his mouth and whistled. Three notes rose, one falling over the other. Orrin paused, repeated the pattern, paused again, and repeated it a third time. The tones seemed to hang between the trees rather than fade into them.

The lamb went silent. Above the clearing, something answered. Not with a call, but with the beating of wings.

The first beat moved the leaves. The second shook loose dead needles from the branches. The third came from somewhere nearer, still surprisingly quiet even though its downward force was enough to bend grass and raise dust.

The moonlight vanished as if eclipsed. A shape passed over the treetops, blotting out a section of sky. Two wings, broad and black, beat once as the creature banked. Its shadow swept across the clearing, over the lamb, over Orrin, over the crouched adventurers.

Margaret’s skull staff brightened.

“That's a *big* bird,” she whispered.

Buzz tilted his helmet toward the sky.

“Big for you,” he buzzed.

Margaret’s ears flattened.She opened her mouth, but had no time to wield her anger against her fellow adventurer.

The Night Hawk was coming down.

It was larger than any natural bird. Its feathers hung in ragged layers, black and dull as wet ash. Its talons reached for the ground, long enough to close around a man.

John’s fingers tightened around the net. Bagark shifted his weight. Aller raised his dagger.

The lamb began to scream.

The Night Hawk folded its wings and dropped.

>The ambush is ready!
>John: Roll 3d6 for the net. Craft + Human Fighter + 1, with +1 additional die for his practice.
>Bagark: Roll 3d6 to assist with the throw and hold the creature down.Strength + Half-orc Fighter + 1.
>Buzz: Roll 3d6 for the bees to scout the Night Hawk’s approach. If it gets away, a success of at least 2 degrees will embed bees in its plumage or flesh to follow. Nature Survival + Bee Tactics + 1.
>Margaret: Specify you strategy, relevant stats, and roll dice!

Rolled 3, 2, 4 = 9 (3d6)

>>6458187
Bee wary...
>Buzz Roll

Rolled 4, 3 = 7 (2d6)

>>6458187
>Margaret: Specify you strategy, relevant stats, and roll dice!
I suppose the best she can get it's two dice. Womanlet Rage and Mogwai.
I really expected Aller to be the one throwing stuff. Not 45 kg of midge. Try to not touch the barrel unless it's needed. Throw the molotov cocktails at it once it's captured and set it on fire.

I wonder if she can use her witchcraft for something to get an extra roll. Like commanding spirits to block the bird's vision. If it's a zombie, it could be able see ghosts, maybe. She can try to blind it with light if things don't go well.
I hope she can learn offensive spells.

>>6458214
>Like commanding spirits to block the bird's vision.
You can do that for sure!

>Aller
Whoops, I missed him, lol.

>>6458187
>Aller: Specify your strategy, relevant stats, and roll dice!

Rolled 5 (1d6)

>>6458221
Based, Extra "Witchcraft" roll to make her use the spirits like that.
Forget the blinding light, she will get more affected by it than the bird.

Rolled 4, 6, 2 = 12 (3d6)

>>6458187
Huzzah!

Rolled 3, 5, 1 = 9 (3d6)

>>6456396
Aller roll: 3 (rogue, athletics, sneaking)
He helps Maggie set the bird on fire once it's on the net by throwing the oil and pitch.

Rolled 3, 3, 4 = 10 (3d6)

>>6458187
Bagark

>>6458188
>>6458214
>>6458221
>>6458230
>>6458300
>>6458429
>>6458511
The bees felt it first, a shift in the air off the ridge, and Buzz's arm shot up.

>Buzz: degree 2. Warning given in time, direction known.

It came out of the dark low and fast, wings that blotted stars.

John had already clocked the angle. He threw.

>John: Critical Success, degree 4. The net opens wide and true.

It caught the thing mid-dive, wings tangling, the whole mass crashing down into the clearing in a shriek of feather and rope.

Bagark was on it before it hit the ground, weight down, forearm braced across something that fought like a landslide.

>Bagark: degree 2. He holds. Barely, but he holds.

Margaret's hands moved through shapes and patterns insensible to mortal men. Green light poured off the skull and did not touch the bird at all, it went past it, into it, searching.

>Margaret, Witchcraft: degree 3. The spirits find the seam. Not flesh, not magic. Something older, something running thin. Strong though the bird's body and mind were, there was a weakness in it... A sickness of the soul?

"ALLER, NOW!"

He was already moving. The barrel went up and over, pitch splitting across the net and the thing beneath it, and he had the torch to it before the first splash landed.

>Aller: degree 3. The fire catches whole.

>The Night Hawk takes 1 damage from the fire, after defense.
>Maggie senses its weakest stat: Faith!

The bird was screaming now, a sound like a dozen shrieking animals emerging from a single ill-suited throat. It thrashed under net and fire alike, and it was not dying nearly fast enough.

>The net is burning, as well as any bees on it!
>You have the initiative...

Buzz's remaining bees returned. Wary of the blazing bird, they instead reported on something else: there was yet no sign of Nana Gristmean, nor did they smell her blood on the Night Hawk.

>What do you do? Specify an action and roll related dice. If the Night Hawk is not defeated this round, it will then take its first two actions.

>>6458538
"This Ghoul did not get the Gristmean. The bees smell her not upon its foul beak." Buzz drones.
>Try to determine any lingering whereabouts or clues as to Nana Gristmean's location

>>6458538
Maggie pretty much hard counters this bird.
She gets four dice: Mogwai, Witch Doctor for faith attacks, Witchcraft, Healer because it's a sickness of the soul, a parasite even. I don't know about womanlet rage.
She will exorcize the evil/sickness/parasite, that's a faith action. There's fire already set up, the fire purifies and it's used in rituals.

Rolled 3, 4, 1, 4 = 12 (4d6)

>>6458607
Forgot

it may soon worth now making suggestions and/or rolls for the other characters, if they do not within 2-4 hours.

Rolled 4, 1, 1 = 6 (3d6)

>>6458538
Aller roll: 3 (rogue, athletics, sneaking)
Aller doesn't seem to have used the oil bottles, only the pitch so this seems like a good moment to throw them.
If someone has a way to make the bird talk through cunning, overwrite this vote.

John looks like he worships the Christian God so he could pray? But I don't want to play for John anon.
Bagard could pick a leafy branch to fan the fire up or something. I don't know if orcs in this setting are religious.

Rolled 6, 2, 6 = 14 (3d6)

>>6458668
Bagark
Fighter, Bravery, Strength
Bagard picks a leafy branch to fan the fire up or something. He position himself to protect Maggie if the bird lashes out.

Rolled 1, 5, 2 = 8 (3d6)

>>6458544
>Nature Survival + Bee Tactics + 1 for 3 dice. Rolling.

>>6458607
Healer may be a stretch for this action but it comes up 4 either way.

Rolled 3, 6, 1, 4, 2 = 16 (5d6)

>>6458775
Rolling for John's attack. he's been wiating for this, player has signaled what he wants very much: Bravery, Athletics, and Swords, plus Human Fighter to try to leap into the fire, tear open the Night Hawk, and get back out before burning.

Rolled 4, 4, 4, 1 = 13 (4d6)

Rolled 3, 3, 1 = 7 (3d6)

>>6458607
>>6458609
>>6458674
>>6458700
>>6458775
>>6458777

>Buzz: degree 3. The bees report back.

There *was* dwarf-smell on the thing. Old, faint, hours gone. But no blood. Whatever the Night Hawk had done with Nana Gristmean, it had not opened her up with beak or claw.

"This Ghoul did not gut the Gristmean. The bees smell her not upon its foul beak.

>Aller: degree 2, minus 2 Defense. No damage.

"Stop talking and do something!" Aller had the lantern oil up and over, two bottles smashing across the net in a wash of flame.

>Margaret: degree 2 against Faith. 2 damage.

The Night Hawk got its wings under itself and stood up inside the fire. It was shaken. That much was plain in the way it moved, in the pitch of the sound coming out of it, in how long it took to find its feet. It was also, unmistakably, looking at Maggie.

The mogwai girl had stopped chanting. What came off the staff now was steady, silent and deadly, and glowing a green that was brighter than the fire. It went past and underneath feathers and flesh, into whatever was holding the thing together.

The Night Hawk, infuriated, came at her.

>Bagark: degree 5, minus 2 Defense. 3 damage.

The half-orc had a leafy branch in one fist and was using it like a bellows. The pitch-fire went from a blaze to a roar.

"THE MAGIC IS WHAT HURTS IT," he roared. "GUARD THE WITCH."

Again, the huge bird rose. Oil sheeted off it, still burning, splashing wide into the dry grass, and it did not seem to notice. Wings came out to their full span, and the clearing was suddenly a great deal smaller. It advanced on Margaret.

Buzz hummed thoughtfully at that, noting, "f it dies here, the dwarf may never be found."

There was a pause... But shirt-lived.

>John: Critical Success, degree 4, minus 2 Defense. Body 6 4. Plus something extra, which will keep for a moment.

It ended when John started roaring with joy.

He went into the fire, without hesitation. Through the burning net and under the wing and up, sword first, opening the thing from breast to flank in one long stroke, and out the other side with his half-plate smoking and not one inch of him burned.

>>6458795
The Night Hawk staggered.

>Total damage so far: 6 to Body, 2 to Faith.

>Rolled wing attack for the Night Hawk: >>6458780
>Success. It breaks the net.

It burst out of the ruined mesh with a shriek and hammered its wings, and the fire went with the wind of it, sheets of burning oil thrown out across the clearing and into the treeline. Somewhere behind them Orrin started howling about his cabin.

>Rolled necromancy at >>6458783
>Partial Success.

The bone-litter under the perch tree began to move.

Rabbit. Fox. Lamb. A thing that had been a deer once and now had rather more legs than it started with. They pulled themselves up out of the leaf mould in pieces, wrong and quick, four of them stumbling upright between the party and the trees.

The Muller sow was still assembling. It was taking longer, because there was more of it. More weight... More power.

And through all of this terror, the Night Hawk's wounds were closing. The gash John had opened was knitting itself shut as they watched, the burns crusting and sloughing away clean.

The Night Hawk gathered itself to fly.

"Coward!" Bagark bellowed.

"Let me kill you!" John shouted.

Something was wrong though. Te left wing did not fold right. It looked down at it. Worked it once, twice, and the joint was already setting itself back together, but slower than the rest.

>The extra from John's crit: flight is delayed.

Buzz's voice came flat through the netting. "The bees have been watching this whole time and they have found no blood."

"Yeah yeah, the dwarf, but what about the battle?" Aller replied.

"No bird blood either."

Nana Gristmean had drawn blood in that yard with a hat pin, or some ichor like blood. So far, with all this fire and steel, the party had failed to replicate that feat. Was any physical wound they dealt so far even a mortal one?


>Four small skeletons will attack next turn. The sow may join them the turn after.
>The Night Hawk is regenerating Body damage. Its Faith is not coming back.
>It is preparing to take to the air. The bad wing is buying you time and not much of it.
>The fire is spreading into the treeline and toward Orrin's cabin.
>Nana Gristmean's whereabouts and condition remain unknown.
>What will you do?

Rolled 3, 4, 4, 1 = 12 (4d6)

>>6458801
>>6458801
I repeat Maggie's previous action to attack him with faith. Undead are weak to healing in some videogames and you used the word "sickness" so it's not that much of a stretch,I think.

I fucked up everything with the fire but I would lie if I told I don't like how the combat works.

>>6458801
>Keep the skeletons and undead away from the rest of the party
John's sword might not be the best to fight the Night Hawk, but that doesn't mean there isn't fighting to be done!

>>6458852
It's a metaphor lol

>>6458801
I can't roll but I'd like Bagark to go all out with damage but also intimidation. Target the broken wing.
Aller should tell the bird that he will let it go if he tells him about the old hag. Otherwise, his slave will stop holding back and will exorcize him for good.
>>6458893
This quest is too high IQ for me

>>6458801
The bees shall swarm The Night Hawk. It shall suffer their stings. It shall not soar. Know your place, feathered thing...

Below the bees.

... and I guess Buzz can grab a bucket of water or something while they do that to slow the fire?

>>6458900
Anyone can roll! This is not a skirmish. Any vote rcan control any or all characters as I said in the OP >>6456366

>>6458929
Go ahead and roll for both Buzz and his bees please.

>>6458976
Errr, what should I roll? 3d6?

Rolled 6, 6, 1, 2, 2, 2 = 19 (6d6)

>>6458976
Bagark gets a full house.
Half-orc, Fighter, Axes, Bravery, Strength,
Intimidation
He attacks the bird with a focus on disabling and intimidating him.

Rolled 2, 4, 2 = 8 (3d6)

>>6458976
>>6458979
Right, right, the skills... here goes something...

Rolled 5, 1 = 6 (2d6)

Yellow ID was me, I was busy.
>>6458976
Aller gets a 2d6? For Rogue and cunning.

>>6458987
Bravery applies best when charging into specific peril such as entering an area that is on fire or facing goes who outnumber and outmatch you. You did damn fine anyway though lol.

>>6458989
Not awful either.

>>6458879
You should roll also. Human Figther, Swords, and Athletics all work.

Someone should probably vote and post for Aller soon too.

Oops. Messed up my trip lol.

>>6458987
Btw remember class + race are your Quality. You get one dice from that whenever both or either apply.

>>6458993
Here is the Aller Roll >>6458991

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

>>6458993
You got it boss!

Rolled 5, 4, 3 = 12 (3d6)

Rolled 5, 1, 5, 1, 5, 3, 4, 2, 6 = 32 (9d6)

>6458852
>6458879
>6458900
>6458929
>6458987
>6458987
>6458989
>6458991
>6459001

>John: Partial Success, degree 1.

With four undead animals surrounding him and John was, for the first time since arriving, entirely content.

A sword is the wrong tool for a skeleton. It went through the fox's ribs and came out the other side without meaningfully changing the fox's situation, which John seemed to find educational rather than discouraging. The lamb he simply hit flat, hard enough that its spine came apart at the shoulder. It stayed down.

>One down. Three left. He is also now well out of position, and they are on all sides of him.

"WE'LL LET YOU GO," Aller bellowed over the noise. "The old dwarf biddy, alive, and you fly off tonight!"

"*No,*" said Margaret and Bagark, in perfect unison.

She wanted the sickness burned out of it. He wanted the head for a trophy.

>Bagark: degree 5. Intimidation fails. The thing is past fear.
>3 damage to Body.

The axe took the good wing at the joint and then went back across for the bad one, twice, and the mending could not keep up with the breaking. Feathers scattered everywhere, and the warrior heard the crunch of something structural.

>The Night Hawk cannot fly this turn.

Cornered, the Night Hawk struck.

>Night Hawk beak attack, >>6459023. Rolled 5, 4, 3. Degree 3, minus Bagark's Body Defense of 2, minus 1 for chainmail. No damage.

The beak took him across the chest and the chainmail turned it. Bagark staggered and did not fall.

>The Night Hawk spends its second action mending. Body heals 2.

The black bird got its feet under it and shouldered past him, straight for the small gshape on the far side of the clearing: Margaret.

Buzz was on the far end of a bucket chain with Orrin, both of them working the treeline and the cabin roof, and he sent the bees instead.

>Buzz: degree 2, minus Defense. No damage.

They were barely an irritant, but that annoyance was enough. The bird held, one half-second, head jerking against the swarm.

>Margaret: degree 2 to Faith. 2 more damage.

Half a second was all Maggie needed. The skull-staff's energies entered it again, and this time the Night Hawk collapsed, barely able to hold itself together.

"It isn't too late!" Aller tried.

"LIAR." The voice came out of that throat like something dragged over stone. "YOU WILL HAVE NOTHING."

>Undead attacks, >>6459025.
>Fox on John: 5, 1. Degree 3, minus 2 Body Def, minus 1 half-plate. No damage.
>Rabbit on John: 5, 1. Same. No damage.
>Deer-thing on John: 5, 3. Degree 3, minus 3. No damage.

The three little ones came at John and broke on his half-plate like surf on the shore.

The sow proved more substantial. With John occupied, it finished it's assembly, and charged head-first at the only other tusked animal in the area.

>>6459029
>The Muller sow on Bagark: 6, 4, 2. Natural 6 plus a remaining 6 is degree 5... critical.

It came out of the dark with the speed and force of a falling tree, four hundred pounds of assembled pig bones with its skull lowered, and it hit Bagark square in the ribs before he had finished turning toward it.

>Degree 5, minus 2 Body Def, minus 1 chainmail. 2 damage. Bagark: Body 7 5.

He went off his feet and into Orrin's woodpile.

The Night Hawk looked down at Margaret. It tilted its head. It made a sound that was almost a chirp, small and curious and horrible coming out of something that size, and turned its head the other way to look at her with the other eye.

"PERHAPS *YOU*," it said, "WILL SEE THE NEST."

>Where you stand:
>Faith 3. She has taken off most of its Faith HP by herself, and that stat does not regenerate. One more good round from her may end this.
>If she ends it, whatever it knows about Nana Gristmean ends with it.
>If she does not end it, it is standing directly over her and it has stopped being interested in anyone else.
>Bagark is on his back in a woodpile with a skeletal sow on top of him. Body 5/7.
>John is holding three of them and cannot get across the clearing.
>Buzz and Orrin are the only reason the treeline is not fully alight, but the fire is now under control.
>Aller hasn't been hurt and knows what it wants, but it's tough to negotiate with someone you're also attacking.
>What do you do?

Rolled 1, 4, 3, 2 = 10 (4d6)

>>6459030
Dangerous but I'm going to repeat the rolls for Maggie's faith attack but she won't attack. This turn she builds up power to release it on the bird if things get out of control.

If the bird doesn't even care about Aller anymore, he could talk through Maggie since the bird thinks she's sincere or stupid enough.

File: Spoiler Image (535 KB, 1274x1875)

535 KB PNG

>>6459050

Anyone else?

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

>>6459030
Kill now. Investigate later.
>The SWARM attacks the bird

Rolled 2, 4, 6 = 12 (3d6)

>>6459288
Aller tells Maggie what to say since the bird seems to trust her. He tells her to ask about the nest, where is it, what did he do whith the dwarf.
Rogue, cunning and seduction maybe?

Rolled 1, 5 = 6 (2d6)

>>6459288
Bagark just fights the skeleton harassing him
Fighter, Strength. I doubt he can use his axe in this situation.

>>6459348
kek I'll allow seduction under the circumstances, yes.

>>6459351
I'd allow the axe. You can roll one more d6 if you like.

If someone would care to act and roll for John, that would allow us to proceed.

Rolled 1 (1d6)

>>6459357
Axes roll

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

>>6459288
Roll for John to destroy the remaining skeletons: Fighter, Athletics, Swords

I at least want to get to the ending of this mission

Rolled 4, 6 = 10 (2d6)

I appreciate it.

Rolled 5, 3, 4 = 12 (3d6)

>>6459050
>>6459223
>>6459294
>>6459348
>>6459351
>>6459359
>>6459511

>Margaret: holding. She builds the charge and does not release. If she strikes next round, she adds 1 point to her degree of success.

Aller crouched behind the woodpile and watched the bird watch Margaret.

It had not looked away in some time. For some reaosn (he noted with a professional's eye on her backside specifically) the Night Hawk seemed fixated on her

He started whispering what she should say.

>Aller, through Margaret: Critical Success, degree 4. Social 4 down to 2.

What came out of Margaret, in a voice pitched considerably higher than her usual, was a great deal about how *big* the Night Hawk was, and how *powerful*, and what a *terrible waste* it would be to see something so magnificent burned down in a clearing by a pack of ruffians. She kept her hands folded, and squeezed her arms together strategically. She looked up through her lashes. She said the word "magnificent" three times.

The Night Hawk stopped advancing entirely, and began preening proudly.

>Bagark vs. the sow: degree 3.

Bagark got a fist free and put it through the sow's face. Then again, and a third time, and something in the skull crunched inward. He groped through the woodpile with his other hand, found the haft of his axe, and brought the pommel down on what was left.

>A critical against a lesser undead is enough. The Muller sow is finished.


John killed the fox. The remaining two small animal skeletons came in low, under the swing, and got their small dead hands into the gaps of his half-plate and started working their way in.

>John: Partial Success, degree 1.

Something got past the steel and bit.

>Undead attack on John, >>6459523. Rolled 4, 6. Degree 4, minus 2 Body Def, minus 1 half-plate. 1 damage. John: Body 7 down to 6.

Across the clearing, Margaret (really Aller) was still talking: "There's not reason we should destroy such a *legendary* creature... if only you would return to us the dwarf!"

The Night Hawk answered: "I CANNOT, FAIR ONE."

"But why?" she asked.

The Night Hawk explained that it had come when the whistle called, and it had swooped down upon the old dwarf, "BUT I UNDERESTIMATED MY PREY. SHE WAS STRONGER THAN EXPECTED. SWIFTER. GRACEFUL IN SPITE OF HER... EXPERIENCE. AND SHARP AS A TALON, TO FIND MY WEAKNESS SO QUICKLY."

"Weakness?" Aller whispered to himself.

"I WAS IN LOVE."

>>6459542
"...*Really?*" Aller's head came up over the woodpile. "She's an old dwarf! She must be all wrinkly, and hairy, and-"

"SILENCE! AND ANYWAY, I AM THE OLDER. AND EVEN IF I WASN'T, I'M A FEMINIST. I SEE THE BEAUTY WITHIN."

Then it turned its head back to Margaret.

'THOUGH YOU HAVE THE BEAUTY OF INNER STRENGTH AND, AH, THE OTHER KIND. I COULD BE PERSUADED TO ADD *YOU* TO MY LOVE NEST INSTEAD. OH, IT'S IN THE WOODS JUST NORTH OF HERE, IN THE TALLEST PINE. THE VIEW IS TO DIE FOR."

"I'd love to be your, uh." Margaret's ears twitched. "Nest-mate. Or whatever. But I don't really see how that would *work*, physically."

>And because of the teamwork and the critical:

"AS I SAID, APPEARANCES ARE ONLY SKIN DEEP."

Then the feathers folded in. They came in and down and around and settled as a black cloak over a pair of shoulders, and standing where the bird had been was a tall pale young man with a fall of dark hair, a fine jaw, and a sly smile.

"A shapeshifter?" said Bagark, disappointed at his trophy's diminishing stature.

"Oh, come *on*," groaned Aller, suddenly feeling underdressed.

"What is happening over there?" shouted John, still struggling with his own foes. "I can't see! Someone tell me what it turned into?"

>Night Hawk social attack on Margaret, >>6459529. Rolled 5, 3, 4. Degree 3, minus her Mind Defense of 1. 2 damage. Margaret: Mind 5 down to 3.

"A *bishie*" Margaret shrieked, cheeks warming and coloring. Her staff dipped.

"*Vulnerable!*" corrected Buzz, throwing his bucket aside.

>Buzz: Critical Success, degree 4, minus 2 Def. 2 damage to Body.

Buzz's swarm went off him in a single black sheet, and it hit the handsome young man in his elegant face.

He screamed, inhuman sounds, falling over on his back as he pulled handfuls of stinging insects from his mouth, nose, and eyes.

>Where you stand:
>The Night Hawk is in man-shape, badly hurt, swarmed, and cannot fly.
>The Night Hawk's Faith, Body*, and even Social HP are low now.
>*Body still regenerates, though, unless hit with its weakness (unknown).
>It has admitted taking Nana Gristmean alive to its nest, and told you the rough location.
>John is on the ground with two skeletons mauling him.
>The sow is down. The fire is out. Bagark has his axe back.
>What do you do?

Rolled 5, 5 = 10 (2d6)

>>6459544
I want to hook him up with Widow Hesk. She's got inner and outer beauty and animals to feed him with. Plus Aller needs a way to shake her off him.
It doesn't hurt his masculine pride though.

Action: Aller tells Buzz to stop and starts talking to the birdman as if the specter was a Chad to gain his good side. He also compliments his taste in women.
He says he knows an even better woman and starts describing Hesk. But he can't hook him up with her if he takes her to his nest forcefully. A true feminist needs to understand women can't be like birds in a jail. True love can only be if it's in freedom.
(If he can't understand that, then he's too dangerous to be left alone).
Rolls: Rogue, Cunning

>>6459544
>Fight skeletons. Fight skeletons. Fight skeletons.

Rolled 3, 5, 6 = 14 (3d6)

>>6459544
Bagark helps Jonh with the skeletons

>>6459544
Maggie heals John
Skills: Healer, Witch Doctor, Witchcraft

>>6459695
>>6459706
>>6459629
Can I get rolls for John and Maggie, one more roll for Aller, and Buzz's action if any?

Rolled 2, 6, 5 = 13 (3d6)

>>6459544
>>6459629
In any other case the bees would reduce Aller to a pile of hives, boils, and rashes... fortunately Buzz has pleaded on Aller's behalf.

Buzz finds Aller smokin', after all. What the hell lies beneath that bee suit?

>The Bees bunch around the skeletons to slow their movements!

Rolled 3, 5, 1 = 9 (3d6)

>>6459711
Maggie roll

Rolled 2, 3, 4 = 9 (3d6)

>>6459711
Jonh roll

Rolled 5, 3, 3 = 11 (3d6)

Ok, let's go!

>>6459695
>>6459704
>>6459714
>>6459739
>>6459762

"Let him up," Aller called.

>Buzz: Critical Success, degree 4. The swarm relocates.

The bees came off the birdman in a single peeling sheet, crossed the clearing, and settled on the two skeletons still burrowing into John's half-plate.

"Ack! It tickles," John announced, thrashing in the leaf mould as they worked their way in after the undead.

They dragged both skeletons out through the gaps and up into the air, where the little bony abominations hung kicking about four feet off the ground.

>Bagark: Critical Success, degree 4. John: degree 2. Nothing is left standing.

Bagark and John destroyed them at leisure, like piñatas made of calcium carbonate and full of insects.

Bagark huffed. Two skeletons and a pig carcass were far less satisfying as a story than a giant zombie eagle. John was just delighted he got to kill things.

"Go help John. I've got this," Aller told Marharet.

>Margaret: degree 3 on the heal. 1 HP restored per degree. John back to full.

Margaret placed her hands on John's side and the green light did it's work once more, but gently this time. The scratches and bites under his armor stopped stinging.

Aller meanwhile walked out to the pale man in the feathered cloak with full confidence, no longer bothering to hide behind Maggie's allure.

"You want inner strength? I know just the woman for you! There's a woman in that town who buried her husband, kept his farm, works it *alone*, and told four grown men to their faces she wouldn't give up a single sheep for anybody's grandmother." He spread his hands. "That's spine! And as far as *outer* beauty goes—"

He made a gesture, like a huge semicircle over his chest. It wasn't especially subtle.

>Aller: degree 3, minus 2 Def. Social 2 down to 1.

The Night Hawk's eyebrows went up.

Privately, Aller felt the delicious lightness of a man watching a problem walk away from him on somebody else's arm.

"More for me," Buzz buzzes quietly.

Aller's eye twitched. Who or what was in that beekeeper suit??

>>6459779
>The Night Hawk regenerates 2 Body, then acts.

"PERHAPS," said the Night Hawk, "I HAVE BEEN OLD-FASHIONED. TO CARRY A MATE OFF IN ONE'S TALONS WAS IN FASHION IN MY DAY. PERHAPS THE MODERN WOMAN FINDS THIS... PRESUMPTUOUS." He inclined his head to Aller. "I THANK YOU."

Then he turned away from Aller entirely, crossed to Margaret, and went down on one knee in front of her, and took both her small hands in his.

"WOULD YOU DO ME THE HONOR OF JOINING ME IN ETERNAL NIGHT?"

>Social attack on Margaret, >>6459773 . Rolled 5, 3, 3. Degree 3, minus 1 Mind Def. 2 damage. Margaret: Mind 3 down to 1. She loses the held charge

The clearing got very quiet.

Margaret went scarlet from the ears down. The staff slipped out of her grip and the green she had been holding for two rounds went out of it like a snuffed lamp. Her knees folded. He caught her against his chest without missing a beat.

"I COULD CARRY YOU THERE TONIGHT, AND RETURN FOR THIS WIDOW HESK TOMORROW. I WILL EVEN BRING BACK THE BEAUTEOUS HURDA GRISTMEAN, IF SHE SO DESIRES."

Then he tipped her chin up with one finger and leaned in.

"WHAT DO YOU SAY?" he whispered, though still in a strange sort of way that boomer throughout the clearing.

>He is potentially one kiss and social roll from sealing this. Margaret has 1 Mind, so she can still act... For now!
>The Night Hawk has no remaining minions, but his body regenerating.
>John is at full health and free. Bagark has his axe. Buzz has his swarm back.
>What do?

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

>>6459781
Bagark cries "Here comes the Orc of Cockblock" and grabs the midge and runs towards the "nest" or the city.
Rolls: Bravery, Strength, Fighter

(I'm a purityfag, OP. Theoretically the midge could be sexed but not like this. I won't elaborate, it's better like that.)

Rolled 2, 1, 2 = 5 (3d6)

>>6459781
Margaret isn't some whore that you can pump and dump . She grabs her staff and makes one last faith attack against the wrath.
Rolls: Witch Doctor, Womanlet Rage, Witchcraft.

Sorry for that. I'm not angry or anything. The quest is great. I'll just create another girl if the bird gets this one.

>>6459837
>>6459838
Nobody owns any specific character as stated in the OP. However I do think it best to refrain from rolling for everyone's characters in rapid succession to save one, without giving them a chance to play. >>6459832 is going to be disregarded if someone else proposes a different course of action for him. It will stay as is if not.

Margaret will not be sexed by a bird, but she could be damselled and distressed or simply "knocked out" by seduction. Just a full swoon. But the idea is that characters are meant to be selectively owned, loosely characterized, and a bit goofy and disposable. I fear too much ownership and investment in characters may be a problem for this game type and be part of why participation has been spotty.

>>6459840
I acted that way because I'm doing most of the rolls most of the time, even with different IP's because Jonh and Buzz have only rolled for their characters. Not for greed or I would have rolled for Aller. If someone else rolls for Bagark then great for the quest.
I understand OP, you can sex the midge if you want. I'll just create another one for the meat grinder.

Rolled 3, 6, 4 = 13 (3d6)

>>6459781
Bee at peace...
>Sting this sucka
>>6459840
As a fellow QM I think a decent compromise (since it's been established that we aren't in sole control of our characters and whatnot) is to let the roll sit for a time, then offer for people who have already rolled for a character to do so again. Gives other people a chance to contribute.

That said, I think it's just the nature of the beast when players are controlling the actions of multiple characters as well as their rolls, hence why I think there should be a time threshhold before previous rollers get a chance to roll again for someone else. Just my two cents!

>>6459845
I agree and like to ideally wait until at least 3 or 4 hours have passed since I don't update befroe 4 hours minimum anyway.

>>6459843
My intent it not to sex the midge. It just seemed like a funny way to acknowledge the lewds and the seduction attempt and keep combat multi-layered.

>>6459781
>Unless, the party decides on another course of action John attacks with net and sword. He's pretty simpleminded about these things.

Also, I just want to be clear while I only intend to play John (and someone else if he happens to die) I'm totally fine with other people playing/rolling him if I'm not around. I just like the murderhobo and wish the best for him. But also, this a cooperative game and the rules have been clear on how it's to be played.

>>6459875
Alright go ahead and roll. I'll accept >>6459832 as well and will try to get one more post in tonight.

Rolled 6, 2, 2 = 10 (3d6)

>>6459781
Aller slaps Margaret in the butt to take her out of her trance. With just the right amount of force, hard enough to wake her up, soft enough for her to not get hurt and understand his intentions.
Then he tells everyone to calm down and act like civilized humanoid races.
Roll: Rogue, Cunning, Sneaking
>>6459837
Can we change this to Maggie being pissed off because she won't accept polygamy? It's my post anyways.

Rolled 6, 2, 2 = 10 (3d6)

>>6459875