OOC

[Mister-Kent]

Been pretty sick, currently waiting on the results of Covid test, but I look forward to updating soon!

[jemmus]

Oh man. Feel better, hoping for good results for you.

[Marullus]

A little on the nose for recent posts. (My apologies for the sacrilege.)

FB_IMG_1616684594896.jpg (29.47 KiB) Viewed 922 times

Edit: Spoiler tags. That image is HUGE.

[redwarrior]

Similarly, this one really made me smile.

FAFO.jpg (27.96 KiB) Viewed 917 times

[jemmus]

for both of those. I wonder if Sheriff Goran's name came from the musician Goran Bregovic?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zv_lBLU5Vo

[Marullus]

Sadly, no. It came from the Croatian name generator.

I'm getting into more of the SWN tools in this game and finding them all superb. The "One Roll NPC" system in particular is fantastic. It varies me away from me normal reusable tropes and gives me just enough unique detail that I can slot each new NPC into an exact place on the plotmap and hook them each to at least three additional things. I love having layers of depth and this is making it natural without any writer's block.

[Marullus]

Been pretty sick, currently waiting on the results of Covid test, but I look forward to updating soon!

How did it go, Kent, are you feeling any better?

[Craigers07]

Sorry, I’m on vacation right now. I’ll check back in tonight.

[Marullus]

If you find yourself with extra time while others are dialoging, it's a good time to go back over past posts and to update the NPC list with things you want to remember or go back to.

As already noted above, the material in this game is intentionally dense and your interest drives the sandbox.

[jemmus]

My most recent post incorrectly had Taavi checking his dataslab. It should have been a datapad, I've corrected the post.

Taavi will get a room at the boarding house, 25 credits deducted from the character sheet.
Anica's Boarding House (Good, 25 credits, includes food, wifi access, and recharges batteries)

[Marullus]

Just checking in as we go into the weekend. How are you all doing?

[jemmus]

Here! and ready for Taavi weekend posting.
Q: What's the difference between a lawyer lying on the road and a snake lying on the road?
A: The snake has skid marks in front of it.
(I can say that, I'm a lawyer in RL).

[cybersavant]

here, inside, avoiding violent mob

[redwarrior]

The snake may have skid marks, but the lawyer will have peel-out stripes

Doing good! My wife and I got the J&J vaccine on Wednesday, and it really flattened both of us, but we seem to be back to almost normal, though I suspect I'll be putting in some hours this weekend to catch up on day job stuff that I let slide.

Really torn on how I want Hansel to play this next bit. He doesn't really want to get involved, wants to see Zoe live, and thinks that the Lawyer is probably generally OK enough that he shouldn't be pulped by a mob... How big is the oncoming crowd?

[redwarrior]

My ruling on that in the bar fight was you have to commit to one to do it well. Holding a shooting action undermines the sincerity of your talk attempt otherwise. It is totally fair to have one guy talking and the gunslinger next to you holding a shot. (In this case you said Talk first, so I'll ignore the shoot roll.)

I'll try to update tomorrow if I can get to it.

That totally works I knew it had come up before, but couldn't remember the details and wasn't in a place to check the books or search back in history right then. And, yes, my intent, if I had to choose (which it turns out I did..), was to just talk.

[Faanku]

I want to clarify the situation before I post, been out of the loop for a while.
Shadrach and Amalia (with Handmaiden and Houndoom) followed Anya to the church at night, down to the basement level where they find her with Teo Hrsak's body being messed around with by a mentally unstable Anya. Hearing Sahdrach approach, Anya turn a gun on him, but Shadrach talks her down and she drops it just as the corpse starts coming back to life. Shadrach sees this and assumes Anya has performed some sort of ritual, then puts a few mag slugs in the zombie's chest. At this point, its noticeable that the basement floor is slick and black, and a dark tentacle from a rift somewhere whips out to drag the zombie down towards it, as Anya flees in terror and clatters into Amalia on the stairs outside.
So now we have a basement with a very dead Teo, an armed and dangerous Shadrach, a shadow dog, a tentacle from beyond, and Amalia and the Handmaiden at the doorway with a fleeing Anya.

Is that about right?
I mostly feel like a dumbass for thinking there was a third person in the basement because of the line:
"the docent against the wall, Teo's body arrayed on the floor"

[Marullus]

There is/was a third person/body. No worries - there's a lot of detail in these posts, and they're long.

The Young Docent was introduced back here:

The intense afternoon winds down into evening. At the church, Zoe Sadoul composes herself and heads to her home. Lira goes to Anica's Boarding House to get her dinner. Shadrach sees to Amalia and the Handmaiden, arranging rooms for them as well, leaving the church in the hands of a young docent who ties her hair back and sets about scrubbing the flecks of blood from the hardwood floor.

Shadrach then saw Anja in the middle of the night (same post):

Lira and Shadrach, either up late in their rooms or roused from light sleep, hear a creaking, thumping outside. Going to their second floor windows at the boarding house, they're able to have a clear view of Main Street - they see Sister Anja struggling with a wooden handcart, a single wrapped body not quite fitting within. She tries repeatedly to get it up the steps to the front of the church, then to fit it through the front doors, until the whole axle snaps and the wheel falls out. The cart doesn't fit through the doorjam, so she wrestles the body off to just inside the sanctuary, leaving the broken cart on the steps outside.

You're currently at Dawn, where Shadrach alerted you and then ran out half-dressed. When you got to the church, Teo was laid out on the blood-markings on the floor, the docent was slumped against the wall.

The body of Teo Hrsak lies on the floor on an unwound fabric shroud, red smears of blood all around him. The young docent lies slumped against the right wall, tousled hair over her face, unmoving. Kneeling over Hrsak's body is Sister Anja Dosen, her black dress a sticky mess.

The situation on the floor worsened steadily:

Anja's eyes drop to the floor, staring down to the body at her knees. Her hand waivers. The gun drops, clattering to the ground. "What have I done..." Anja says in a hoarse whisper. The hound begins to growl low in its throat. The blood on the floor darkens from red, to maroon, to black. The corpse twitches.

When shot, Teo's corpse fell through the floor (and thus is gone):

Teo's corpse collapses backwards in asynchronous chunks as it is rendered, landing on what used to be blood, seeming to fall through it, disappearing into the opaque blackness as if falling through the basement floor.

Then the tentacle emerged and grabbed the unmoving docent:

The body of the young docent tips over, sliding down the wall and thudding on the floor. A long tentacle snaps outward, grasping it by the leg and dragging it across the floor towards the hole.

So, Anja has run into Amalia in the stairway and clearly desires to flee in panic. The Handmaiden is with you. Shadrach and the shadowy hound are in the room with a tentacle which is pulling in the body of the young docent.

[Enoch]

I want to clarify the situation before I post, been out of the loop for a while.
Shadrach and Amalia (with Handmaiden and Houndoom) followed Anya to the church at night, down to the basement level where they find her with Teo Hrsak's body being messed around with by a mentally unstable Anya. Hearing Sahdrach approach, Anya turn a gun on him, but Shadrach talks her down and she drops it just as the corpse starts coming back to life. Shadrach sees this and assumes Anya has performed some sort of ritual, then puts a few mag slugs in the zombie's chest. At this point, its noticeable that the basement floor is slick and black, and a dark tentacle from a rift somewhere whips out to drag the zombie down towards it, as Anya flees in terror and clatters into Amalia on the stairs outside.
So now we have a basement with a very dead Teo, an armed and dangerous Shadrach, a shadow dog, a tentacle from beyond, and Amalia and the Handmaiden at the doorway with a fleeing Anya.

Is that about right?
I mostly feel like a dumbass for thinking there was a third person in the basement because of the line:
"the docent against the wall, Teo's body arrayed on the floor"

That's about my understanding. But if that docent isn't someone separate from Teo, I misunderstood as well. I had assumed that was a church employee that Anja had subdued somehow.

[Craigers07]

Sorry, I didn't realize so much time had passed. I'm ready to discuss getting out of this town over breakfast.

[Marullus]

No worries.

I was trying to find balance as a GM, too:

• letting you have time and space to interact and come together as a group,
• letting you have opportunity to initiate fact finding in town before each escalation, and
• keeping pace/action moving forward before you get bored and quit.

I don't mind allowing time for the first two as long as we aren't hitting the third -- I appreciate feedback.

I just redid my last post to give you both freedom to interact and also direct opportunity to move ahead when you are ready.