Griznuq Gaming

Jarmok made a quick grunt and a negating shake of his head. "Thank you." He answered. "I go" he added as he turned to leave.

Recognizing that this is yet the 3rd of [May], a day before the meeting at the Stump...

Jarmok's being went on alert. He had known, of course, that Venric would bring travellers and pilgrims, and he had realized that it was now Venric, but somehow he had kept thinking that travelers would arrive "later". Alas, it was now "later".

Jarmok went to investigate the campfires. He'd should have an understanding of what's there (warriors, peasants, land-sharks?) and what impact they'll have on Threshold and Mahiya. He will slink about the fringes of the fires just to see what he can see, then off to home.

This tread is continued in  Jarmok Approaches the Gypsies

Duthash Albyr Syncath [May 3rd, 237 VY]

The rescuing of the pilgrims was not satisfying for Jarmok; they had gotten there too late for most, and those that did survive would likely have night terrors for the rest of their lives. Jarmok knew only too well that particular award for survival.

He tried to not think about the poor souls who were lost, and the poorer ones who were saved. He lay on the floor near the fire in his little cabin; he hadn't been able to sleep in a bed - other than while convalescing with the gypsies - since he could remember. His leg and shoulder ached and oozed thickening blood, but he knew that they would be mending themselves soon and would likely be gone but for some minor scar tissue by morning.

When the rat had exploded in the subterranian temple, Jarmok thought it was frighteningly odd, but in the caves, when the lizard-thing exploded, that was different. The waif, he was now sure, was the cause of that. But she seemed afraid of herself. No one, he thought, should be alone and afraid of themselves. She is in need of a friend now, that much was clear, and she needn't be as skittish and frieghtened as she was. If Jarmok was any judge, she was not fully grown; little more than a child, despite her appearance.

As he considered how best to help her, yet keep secret what she obviously wanted to retain, sleep overtook him as he watched the flames caper lightly in the fireplace.

Crisp early morning air and a sharp pain in his head wakened Jarmok before the sun breached the eastwall. He looked around, his head fuzzy and sat up, then, succuming to gravity's brutal force, he fell down through fronds that tore at his face and hands. He tried ineffectually to grasp some purchase, but what little there was to be found was fleeting and harsh. He only did himself more damage.

Stunned and bleeding, but on the ground at last, he found himself laying prostrate beneath a broad southern fir. How it came to pass that he was in that tree, he could not guess...although shards of a dream of flying pierced his mind rather suddenly. Something odd was clearly afoot.

Whatever the case, it was near-dawn and he should be up and about already. Intimate with all areas of this forest, he rose stiffly and returned to his cabin. Dressing - but leaving his sleeves short so that the fresh wounds upon his hands and lower arms might be more rapidly healed by the morning air - and gathering his weapons, he left on his daily tour to the westwall; he was late, but that could not be helped.

Threshold was yet quiet, as it tended to be. Maal, Jarmok thought, would doubtless be touring the southern fringes about now. Jarmok picked up his gait, jogging toward the Rosewalk. He had already missed the sunrise, but he could at least poke around the forest for signs of the rat-man. He needed to collect Maal and go looking for him, he reminded himself, time was of the essence.

Jarmok was surprised to see the familiar cuvaceous form of Kit walking through the early Sythus morning towards the Rosewalk ahead of him. She was alone, and it was unusual for her to be about this time of the day. His thoughts of last night came unbidden to his mind, and her current solitude punctuated his conviction that she seemed to feel very much alone. Again he picked up his gait to catch up with her; opportunity had surfaced, and he would be remiss if he did not seize it.

He ran up behind her, holding his gear close as was his wont: a hunter must make no noise. That lesson, driven so repetitivly by Mercer, was now more an autonomous response than an effort. He pulled up short just behind the girl and said, "You hurt rat and lizard? Is secret?"

I don't recall whether we've had this discussion in the past, but...

Along the lines of critical hits and misses in combat, I think that there should be the opportunity for critical successes and failures in other skills.

Just to add to the spice...

Critical Success: if you roll a natural 20 on any given skill, you roll again. If that second roll would be a successful one, then you have garnered a critical success. If that second roll would not be a successful one, then you now have a Marginal Success, which is handled as a regular success.

A Critical Success on a Heal check is additional healing that occurs. A critical opposed skill check adds 2 to your opponent's DC (for instance if you're hiding (skill modifier = 5), and roll a critical success, your oponent's spot DC is going to be 27, or 2 above the modified 25 that you rolled).

Critical Failure: if you roll a natural 1 on any given skill, you roll again. If that second roll would be a successful one, then you have garnered a Marginal Failure, which is handled as a regular failure, as we do now. If that second roll would not be a successful one, then you now have a Critical Failure

A Critical Failure on a Heal check is reduced healing that ocurrs (instead of 1+ CN bonus in the event of a success, it is now CN bonus -1 - you actually did damage to your patient).

Critical Failures for other skill rolls will be handled on an as-needed basis. Rest assured that something bad will happen. My thinking is that in the event of a critical failure to your Hide check will have you sneeze at a critical moment. We shall see...

Untended wounds will heal at a rate of CN bonus per night. Tended by the Heal skill will heal as follows:

Marginal Success: 1+ CN bonus per night (Heal check made each day)

Critical Success: 2+ CN bonus per night (Heal check made each day)

See the defenition of a Critical or Marginal Success for a skill roll in another post.

OOC: Matt, do you recall that there were, in fact, rail tracks in the cave, or are you purposefully ignoring that for this partciular conversation?

OOC: Just so that we're on the same page, I think that you mean for this to take palce after the first Troglodyte exploded, yes? My (perhaps faulty recollection) is that only one rat exploded, and in the last session two Trogs exploded, one of whom did not die from it.

In this event, we must then be in the tunnels after the fight with the trogs...

Jarmok: "Don't know. Is good, though, yes?" He smiles a little looking at the ground, then winces and shift uncomfortably and leans heavily against the tunnel wall.

Don't bite me...

Quote from: wildfire"I'm a bit more concerned about what's on the other side of the chasm. i think that conclusional logic leads us connecting the continuing hallway opposite to the one on this side.

Another thing, has anyone seen any dwarf bodies? even the domociles were empty. this place was abandoned...not attacked."[/quote]

Yep - this was clear, although there seems to have been at least a little bit of haste in their departure.

On another vein, we should probably look for doors of the magic type, as opposed to the hidden type around the murder walls. There's a lot more magic in this facility than I would normally associate with dwarves; perhaps upon finishing the grick chamber they were going to create a magical way around it through the via...

:lol:

[color=green:4c888de989]What the hell happened to my last post? All of the words are missing!?!?![/color]

"Well, they'd never actually admit to being afraid of magic. They prefer to profess to magic being untrustworthy; they like things that they can touch and feel, being creatures of the earth. While the arcane doesn't completely ellude them, they are less comfortable with magic than they are with, say, a hammer and a rock."

"It's a stereotype, I suppose."

"Plus, they're a little dense."  :)

You know, Dwarves are a peculiar lot, but they're not typically stupid or foolish in their architecture.

I've been wondering about this dungeon that we've been exploring. The secret passage, as such is what I presume the tunnel behind the rock to be, would have been expected to be an emergency exit of sorts. But I look at the map (figuratively) and I see from the boulder a tunnel to a very elaborate trap, after which is a room with a murder wall.

Now, the murder wall, I expect, is there in the event that the enemy finds their way into the back door, but under normal circumstances, the population of that outpost would be expected to be able to get to and fro via that door. Now I ask myself, if I'm an ugly, hairy, smelly dwarf living in that area, how am I supposed to be able to flee through the exit?

I would have to get around the murder wall, yes?

Let's look at the other murder wall: there's a via around it. Hmmm...

I'm starting to think that area of the complex where the grick was living was an unfinished part of the dungeon; the dwarves would have finished that tunnel, for whatever purpose it was intended, and then hidden the via or even filled it in. Although I would think that they hide it, because they would supposedly need to get around the murder wall in "normal" times.

This in turn leads me to think that there must be a via around the murder wall that has the silver battering ram through it, not that it matters. The "armory" at the bottom of the stairs behind crossfire alley would have been there to support the effort to build the tunnel at the far side of the grick lair. The dwarves building this complex obviously lived in the appartments that we found.

So I'm thinking...