Chapter 2: The Sinews of War

[kensanata]

Splinter reloads!

[mb.]

Deet fires! [1d12] = 9 A very palpable hit!

Schroff bounces beside his master, barking down at the Big Wood Man. If only barks were bullets...

Horrified by the deaths of his friends, but cheered by his own crack marksmanship, Deet reloads.

[Pulpatoon]

Maximus drops the mangled remains of Kurt and Hans into the dust and returns his attentions to the chains wrapped around his legs. The links begin to part.

With a resounding crack!, Deet's musket shot strikes Maximus, rocking the wooden head back.
Total Damage to Maximus: 14
Maximus STR check: [1d20] = 13 Still on his feet.

Splinters reloads.

Jake reaches the bottom of the stairs, stopping just out of the nutcracker's reach. There are marbles, everywhere, making any quick maneuver perilous. And Maximus will be free of your uncle's chain in seconds.

Shaggy and Mouse continue to lie still midway upon the stair. Vanis holds his head and teeters uncertainly.

Langston and Brick, unobserved by the others, float away, somewhere.

Wikerus and Horton reach the top of the stairs. A simple wooden hatch lies between them and the presumed safety of the next room. You feel you have tamed the delicious allure of the ceiling, but the light is blinding this close up, and you fumble desperately at the trapdoor's latch. You will enter the next room, next round.

[Stirling]

Shaggy' Beaker hears the slow tolling of a bell, not the crisp twinkling of seasonal merry ringing but a dull 'boing' eeked out in rhythmic monotony to signal someone's slow passing. He dreams of shaking his head awake but his brain only resonates with more dull thuds...a bell?.. . a nutcracker stepping his way? Mouse has his eyes open, watching the slow drift of companions bob across the ceiling like balloons on a windy day. He feels almost his own spirit will rise effortlessly to join them, drifting in peaceful ethernalness around the Castle.

[Urson]

Jake backpedals up the human-sized stairs until he reaches the first tread of the giant stairs. His intent is to use this 'high ground' as a place to attack from. If he can do it this round, he'll jump onto Max's back, leading with the maul.

Dex 16 [1d20] = 17

maul[1d8] = 4

This is going to get ugly...

[kensanata]

Splinter shouts, Die, traitor! The wizard disapproves of your conduct! Fight rats! Save princesses! But do not kill friendly soldiers!!

Boom! Musket [1d8] = 4

[mb.]

In the escalating excitement, Deet forgets everything his pa taught him about breathing, lining up the target, and calmly squeezing the trigger, and just fires dammit!

BOOM FLASH SMOKE! [1d8] = 5

Schroff bounces down a few steps, and back up to Deet, repeatedly, barking all the while.

Do Big Wood Men have more than 27 HP? Let's hope not...

[Pulpatoon]

Deet will need to reload for a turn before firing. We can carry that roll forward, if you'd like, of you can roll again, next turn.

[mb.]

Yeah, I maybe just got ahead of myself and the rounds. Was just posting his next action.

[ChubbyPixie]

Wikerus glances back down the stairs, horrified by the gore. Squinting in the bright light, with a vivid mental image of Maximus scaling the steps nine at a time, he begins frantically trying to open the hatch. "Fools! What are you running back that way for? The door is up here! He'll crunch you like grapes!"

[coil23]

Horton shares Wickerus' sentiment. Yes, hurry up here! To Wickerus he adds, though it is likely certain death, we should check in here now so the others won't have to come in to a room blind. Horton steels himself to enter the room.

Horton also scans what is around the human-sized wooden hatch. Is it stone around the wooden hatch or is it a larger-size wooden door of which the hatch is a part? If the Nutcracker makes it up here, could he break through to get at them in this new room?

Also looking around he tries to count companions. He says those who are still below on the stairs. Looking around, can he spot anyone else?

[Pulpatoon]

Horton also scans what is around the human-sized wooden hatch. Is it stone around the wooden hatch or is it a larger-size wooden door of which the hatch is a part? If the Nutcracker makes it up here, could he break through to get at them in this new room?

Horton isn't able to make out many details of the area around the hatch because he is so close to the ceiling. In the act of looking around, his attention is caught up in the riot of golden light playing out so close to him. A bank of putti are crowded nearby, stretching out their plump arms in invitation. Alarmingly, one is wearing a bowler hat and a familiar sardonic expression—is that Brick? Brick as a naked, flying baby? In a supreme act of will, Horton turns away from the hypnotic light, and pushes through into the next room.

Horton and Wikerus:

You enter a new floor of the tower. Your torch light does not extend very far (and your night-vision has been fouled by the bright light below), and Deet has the Crooked Theodolite, so you don't have a precise sense of its size, layout, or details. The are within the circle of your torchlight is entirely empty, if dusty.

Shaggy and Mouse lie still. Vanis continues to look bewildered.

Splinters fires again upon Maximus while Deet reloads.

Jake takes a flying leap at the Nutcracker, attempting to both cling to its back and strike with his maul. This proves too much. The young man comes down with a blow that crunches deeply into the glossily-painted wooden torso, but the force of his blow levers him right over the Nutcracker's head. He spins through the air, and lands flat on his back on the opposite side. A cloud of dust erupts from this landing. Jake is now about ten feet behind Maximus, with Maximus between him and the stairs. The wind has been knocked out of him. Out of action for one round while you recover your breath.

Maximus finally snaps the chain apart and hauls himself up to his full height. He turns around and lumbers awkwardly towards Jake's prone body. "Mmm... MAXimus... STROngesssss... wunner... isssssssss..."

The Nutcracker falls to his knees and then keels sideways. His massive bulk barely misses crushing Jake. Another cloud of dust rises.

Total Damage to Maximus: 22
Maximus STR check: [1d20] = 14 Failed!

Actions!
Next post: Monday!

[coil23]

Horton calls out the door (while only looking down!): come up here but don't look at the ceiling! Just keep your eyes on the stairs as you come up here! He will then rejoin Wickerus to explore the new room.

[ChubbyPixie]

Wikerus stares into blackness, frantically trying to pick out some detail to dispel the worst case scenarios playing out in his head when he hears the boom of the toppling Maximus from below. To him, though, it sounds precisely like a giant club or fist pounding his friends into jelly. He can't bring himself to look back down the stairs. Instead, as Horton calls down to the others, he holds the torch behind his head at arm's length and glances from side to side rapidly, as his grandfather taught him, to hasten the return of his night vision...

[mb.]

Deet hops nervously from foot to foot while reloading, "um, Jake?" He smiles when the Big Wood Man keels over, but finishes reloading and fires anyway, for good measure.

BOOM FLASH SMOKE! [1d8] = 5 (same roll as above, just as a reminder)

Schroff sits back on his haunches, and after Deet's musket barks, he also barks one definitive bark, as if to say, "so there."

[Pulpatoon]

Everything is quite in the dark and dusty tower basement after Maximus falls over. Then, Horton's voice rings down from above, muffled by distance and echo, "Come up here but don't look at the ceiling! Just keep your eyes on the stairs as you come up here!" This is followed by a last shot from Deet.

Deet's shot shatters the broad, beribboned chest of the Nutcracker Golem, which leads to a startling transformation. The entire figure crumbles, as though centuries of rot and decay caught up with it in a matter of seconds. But there is a curious reversal to this break-down of matter. The body reverts to a heaping pile of raw materials: stacks of wood, puddles of paint and lacquer, alligator teeth, pickled asparagus, a lodestone, a great quantity of dead bees, turmeric, widow's tears, a yak pelt, several turtle shells, a jar of barnacles, the severed hand of a hanged man, the eye of a blind cat, a wedding ring, and lilies plucked from a tomb under a gibbous moon.

And, curled up amongst this arcane refuse, lie three grotesque figures. They range in size: one is tall—taller by at least a foot than anyone in the party, even Jake—and nearly is wide; one is short and stocky with oddly long arms, another seems to be the shape of a man roughly, even ineptly, fashioned out of metal scrap and oddments.

The three figures stir.
New players! kindly introduce and more fully describe your characters!

We'll get to Wikerus' explorations in a bit.

Actions!
Next post: Wednesday, 10am EDT, 2pm GMT

[Starbeard]

The large figure rolls slowly into a sitting position. His clothes are dandy, full of ornate doily patterns and frills. He slowly moves his foppish hat out of the way to reveal a haughty face adorned with a pointed goatee. His cheeks flush in a peculiar colour, like that of dull lead rather than pink rose. As he moves his limbs emit the soft groan of bending metal, and the tickling heat of burnt saltpater fills the room.

Then, he speaks! As he does so, his lips pucker out rather comically into the exaggerated shape of a tooting horn.

"Aherm-unnnnnnreservedly, I declare: we have him at last. To your feet, brothers. And me to mine. To arms, to arms, &c."

Fixing his wide hat, the giant man rises up with painstaking deliberation, apparently oblivious to his surroundings.

"That-hmmmmmmflagitious wizard will rue this day. Being the day he crossed Ramrod Van der Minié. I shall see to it myself that it is so."

Ramrod—now appearing to be made of flesh that is lead, and lead that is flesh—looks blankly at the occupants of the room. He squints in the hope that doing so will help him comprehend the situation more fully.

[Urson]

Jake lies flat, his face a peculiar shade of blue as he gasps and tries to cough, or breathe, or sneeze. He sucks in a shallow breath, whooping- then another deeper one, and another. Seeing the Giant is down and out, he decides to take a minute to just lie there and regroup.

[Rowenn552]

The vaguely man shaped form of collected rusted oddments of screws, nails, nuts, bolts, silverware, cups and all sorts of other junk begins to tumble about in itself losing its shape before reforming again as a short man wearing a bowler cap (also made of the random metal bits).

Sitting with legs splayed he appears to be scratching his head and says with a voice that sounds like a bucket of cascading small pieces of metal and a hint of a southeast end of Bastion accent, "Oy! Me head is smartin' like I had a long toss in the hay with the innkeep's daughter! Lords abo... Ram!? S'that you me bruvver? Flint!? Flint!? You 'ere too?", the strange man made of the collection of metal bits loses his shape becoming a pile of junk before immediately reforming into a standing man-shape, "Aha! There you are you old dog! It's Camelote! Now to your feet Flint and grab your cow smasher, Rammy says we's under attack.

At this point the rusty man notices the onlookers with smoking guns looking in his and his brothers' direction and calls out while tipping his 'hat' forward a bit and raising his fists like some old timey fisticuffs boxer and spins around in all directions before focusing on the people on the stairs, "Oy you there! On the steps! Yeah you with the smoking heater! You a friend or foe of that ham-fisted wizard and his .. uh ... his wizarding?!"

Camelote looks like if you took these two pictures , rusted the metal, and then smashed them together into the rough shape of a 4' tall man-shape.

[kensanata]

Splinter looks on in confusion, then he lowers his musket and reaches for his wooden belly. Do all the wooden men carry little metal men or flesh men inside? Are there little men inside of me? And frogs and rings and tears and rats? May the great carpenter have mercy on the little man inside me! He gets up from his kneeling position and dusts himself off and then he waves. Oy! Up here! No! Don't look up! Something about the light! Look down, walk up, be quick! We must flank the rats, find the wizard, save the princess, follow orders and help each other! No friendly fire! His expression remains wooden but his left arm is rotating with excitement.

If it makes sense at all and people are wasting time down at the bottom of the stairs, Splinter will take the opportunity the collect his marbles.