A Second Chance (Reincarnation/Crossover)

[Inara Seraph]

Record of attacks (converted to the Gregorian calendar for ease of use)

February 11, 1421: farm razed, fields burned, 3 casualties
February 23, 1421: farm razed, silo toppled, 4 casualties
March 6, 1421: farm razed, no casualties
March 26, 1421: farm razed, fields burned, 5 casualties
April 7, 1421: farm razed, silos toppled, no casualties
April 20, 1421: house razed, 6 casualties

The date: May 2, 1421.

 

[Pipeman]

Right.

As far as I see it, our options are to either take the egg, hope it's not booby trapped and head off to where we suspect the thing's lair to be in the hope that we can pacify it, because I kind of doubt that we can get away with sticking around the baron after taking the egg, or we just abandon ship and try to follow another lead.

The problem with the first option is that, while we can make an educated guess, we don't really know what's actually going on and we can't really be sure that this course of action will not go horribly wrong.
It would also not address the issue of the baron, whose egg we stole, even if it worked in driving the beast away.

The issue with option 2 is that we don't really have any easy way to figure out more about the situation, without entering some other huge risk and we can't be sure the baron won't notice the disabled runes.

 

[overmind]

My idea is that we take the egg and move towards where we think the next attack will be, assuming that this egg belongs to the attacker then it should be focussed on it the moment he/she/it sees it, thus we give it back, and if it still wants to attack then we fight it, hopefully taking both the egg and the monster down.

[X] Grab the egg, get out of here. Finder's keepers.
[X] Avoid the Baron move towards the next place that is certain to be attacked.

 

[Pipeman]

There are 2 places the next attack could be and it could happen anytime between tomorrow and in 10 days.
Not to mention that it'll likely be in a hostile mood, if we meet it there.

Far more sensible to just go to its lair.

 

[Undead frog]

[ ] You don't want to be here anymore. Abandon ship.
.....yeah I'd rather not be touching the egg at the moment,.

Should probably get to dealing with the baron at some point though were probably going to wind up killing him at some point anyway.

 

[Tackyseven]

[ ] You don't want to be here anymore. Abandon ship.

 

[Inara Seraph]

edit: leaving voting open for a little bit longer.

The votes are tied between leaving and taking the egg.

 

[Scope]

[ ] Grab the egg, get out of here. Finder's keepers.

 

[Pipeman]

Fuck it.

[X] Grab the egg, get out of here. Finder's keepers.

 

[MacroDaemon]

[X] Grab the egg, get out of here. Finder's keepers.

The presence of the egg makes an AOE trap or really anything that affects a thief after grabbing the egg unlikely as it or a thrashing thief could damage the egg, but an alarm or something that paralyses a thief before taking the egg could be present.
Could we use a wire construct to grab the egg?

 

[Strange Aeons]

[X] Grab the egg, get out of here.
[X] Make a wire tiger to both grab the egg and lead the way out.

 

[Inara Seraph]

[X] Grab the egg, get out of here. Finder's keepers.

You don't know what a Rhyme Dragon egg looks like, but this looks like a good candidate for one. It's probably the reason behind the attacks. You're not sure what you're going to do with it, but you'd feel a lot better with it out of the baron's possession and into yours. You envelop the egg completely in the silk blanket and pick it up off the altar. It's pretty heavy. You don't think you can run carrying this.

You hold the egg with both arms clutched in front of your breast. You can feel movement from inside the egg. How close is it to hatching? It would be really inconvenient, not to mention unlucky, if it decided to start hatching now. You shake off that troubling thought. The only thing you can do is hasten your escape.

As you step toward the exit, you feel a chill down your spine, and you shiver. This whole place is creepy. What is this a shrine to anyway? Why was the egg placed on the altar? Why are there living quarters down here? You have questions, but no answers. If there's one thing you've learned on this mission, it's that the privilege of having the full picture is a luxury granted to no one, not even royalty. All you have is your own perspective.

You stride as quickly as you can toward the phantom bookcase that marks the entrance to the secret underground bunker. When you turn down to the final corridor, you hear a single set of footsteps in the distance. You're seized by panic, and you look around in desperation. There!

You duck into the storage room as fast as you can, hiding amongst the crates and barrels. The sound of shoes echoing against the stone floor fades down the hallway. They're making a beeline straight to the shrine, whoever they are. You'd put good odds at it being the baron himself, but you didn't see them before you fled. Any minute now, they're going to discover the egg is missing..

What now?

[ ] Now's your chance! Conjure tiger, escape on tiger.
[ ] Now's your chance! Escape quietly.
[ ] You want to know what's going on down here. Confront them.
[ ] You have the element of surprise. Ambush them (lethal).
[ ] You have the element of surprise. Ambush them (nonlethal).
[ ] Something else. (Write-in.)

 

[Robotninja]

Nonlethal ambush.

 

[Biigoh]

[X] You have the element of surprise. Ambush them (lethal).

 

[Pipeman]

[X] Conjure tiger, ambush with tiger. (non-lethal, if possible)

We kind of only know very little about what is actually going on.
Killing whoever this is before even trying to get more information is a bad idea.

As for tactics, to be honest our ranged capbilities are rather bad.
Our best bet is to use the tiger as cover/a decoy, get close fastly with reinforcement and use it to mitigate the damage that gets through, while we decay the shit out of our foe.
Stopping, once they lose comsciousness, tying them up (possibly with magic wire) and healing them afterwards, does not make the whole thing a lot more dangerous.

 

[Scope]

[X] You have the element of surprise. Ambush them (lethal).

DOOM

 

[hunter09]

[X] You have the element of surprise. Ambush them (lethal).

 

[minuseven]

[X] Conjure tiger, ambush with tiger. (non-lethal, if possible)

 

[Inara Seraph]

Tally. Update soonish.

3 - [X] You have the element of surprise. Ambush them (lethal).
-Biigoh, Scope, hunter09

1+2 - [X] You have the element of surprise. Ambush them (nonlethal).
-Robotninja

2+1 - [X] You have the element of surprise. Ambush them (nonlethal). With a tiger.
-Pipeman, minuseven

Click to shrink...

 

[Pipeman]

Honestly, why would we ever ambush someone without a tiger?

Aside from that:

[X] Conjure tiger, ambush with tiger. (non-lethal, if possible)

Click to shrink...

Might want to correct the tally.

 

[Inara Seraph]

Fixed it, thanks.

Still tied x(

 

[Scope]

Making a tiger takes time, you can't exactly ambush with a glowing wire creature that takes a few minutes to form.

 

[Inara Seraph]

It doesn't take quite that long. You can make one in about ten seconds. It would be an 'ambush' in the sense that they definitely wouldn't expect it, even if they would get time to react.

 

[Pipeman]

Might as well bring some arguments in that case.

First of all, going for the non-lethal attacks might make them inclined to do the same.

Secondly, we don't actually know who that is.
Yes, it's most likely the baron.
Keywords being 'most likely'.
We don't even know, if the person actually is an enemy or not.

We are also far from having a full picture of what exactly is going on.
We have a theory, but that's about it.
It's a sound one, but we can easily be wrong.
Until we can actually confirm what is going on I'd like to keep casualties to minimum.
Because death isn't really reversible.

Which brings us to another important thing to consider.
We need to confirm what exactly is going on.
Even if everything works out fine after killing the baron, we'd still have a dead baron on our hands, no dead beast to confirm that we actually accomplished something aside from killing a noble and no guarantee that the beast won't come back to mess the place up again whenever it feels like it.
And that's assuming that our theory is actually right AKA the best case scenario.

Aside from that, should we come to the decision that killing them is the better course of action, we can always do so after we subdued and interrogated them.

Now, considering these things, it should be obvous that, if we succeed, the non-lethal attack has far more advantages, so the real issue here is probably how likely each of these is to work.

First let's consider what each of those choices would actually mean for us.

Our only combat spell is Ice Spear.
We can create a Bronze Tiger. (I think only one, but confirmation might be good.)
We can ccreate a Bronze Pigeon. (Probably multiple of these.)
We can Reinforce ourselves.
We can ignore pain.
And we can use decay and healing.

Our options in case we choose lethal therefor are:

1. Sending our Tiger at them.
This is something we should always do. The Tiger is pretty fast, so chances are it will reach our target unless they kill it immediately.
The main issue with this is that we take 5 seconds to construct it.
Not much of a problem to do before we start the ambush, but reconstructing it could be a problem mid-battle.

2. Spam Pigeons.
Not going to be very effective against a possibly triangle class mage, but might provide a decent distraction.
Unless maintaining them somehow weakens us otherwise, I'd suggest to create as many as we can before the battle just for that initial distraction.

3. Shoot some Ice Spears.
This has a couple of problems.
First of all it isn't an OCP, so the target likely knows how to deal with it.
Secondly, we never really trained it's combat use, so we might just miss.
Lastly, since we are up against what could be a trinagle class mage, we are pretty much going to lose a classical mage battle.
This means that we either need to kill him right at the beginning with the element of surprise on our side, which requires us to get into line of sight, locate him and then actually hit him with the spell before he can properly react, or to hit him with our spell while the Tiger is keeping him busy, which requires shooting into melee.
I'm not confident we can pull off either of those.

4. Abuse our tankyness, bull rush him and decay the shit out of him.
Pretty strsaight forward.
Main risk is not getting that far, but we should be unexpectedly fast with reinforcement, rather tanky and have at leas some cover in the form of our animals.

The only option that wouldn't be viable due to choosing non-lethal would be the Ice Spear, which isn't that likely to work anyway.
Instead should combine the other three no matter what we choose ands I see no reason we can't just stop decay once he's incapacitated.


Edit:
They also aren't in the same room as we are, so we wouldn't be creating it in their sight.

 

[Khiruki]

[X] Conjure tiger, ambush with tiger. (non-lethal, if possible)

Eh. Kinda need to ask questions some time, as this is an investigation. Otherwise, not much to show for this.

 

[Inara Seraph]

*pulls back sleeves*

*shuffles around the Yahtzee cup*

*slams the cup on the table*

[blockquote]Rolled 1d100+25 : 13 + 25, total 38[/blockquote]
[blockquote]Rolled 1d100+40 : 87 + 40, total 127[/blockquote]
[blockquote]Rolled 1d100+35 : 74 + 35, total 109[/blockquote]

 

[Khiruki]

Hm. Bad roll on something rank E, and decent rolls on something rank D and D-...

 

[Inara Seraph]

[X] Conjure tiger, ambush with tiger. (non-lethal, if possible)

You've already removed the runes- whoever is down here with you knows you're here. You'd rather force a confrontation right now. And you'll force it in your favor. You weave your prana expertly into the shape of a glittering bronze tiger. You hop onto its back and lead it forward out of the storage room. The space is a little cramped, but your tiger is agile enough to navigate the narrow hallway.

Your ambush will have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but you're not trying to be stealthy. You're going for an all-out offensive. Nothing says 'Surprise, motherfucker' like an enormous feline running full bore straight at you. You channel even more prana into your arms and legs, reinforcing their structure and making you both more powerful and durable.

You turn the last corner, and your tiger starts accelerating to pounce on your target. You grip the lattice-wire tightly so as not to fall off. The figure in the distance turns around to face you and reveals itself to be the baron himself. You lean in on your ride, urging him forward and preparing yourself to leap off as you approach.

You hop off the side and direct your creation to jump straight at the baron, wire-claws extended to subdue him. You don't feel too worried about doing lethal damage. You can heal him up later as long as you don't instantly kill him. You hit the stone floor hard, but the recoil is minor to your reinforced limbs. You straighten up and start pumping your legs forward, running in to support your tiger with an aura of decay spreading out from your fingertips.

Your tiger isn't faring too well, though. The baron raised some kind of wind-based shield, deflecting the tiger's leap and sending him careening in the other direction. He can't advance on the baron without the baron firing a compressed wind blast that looks awfully damaging, forcing him to dodge.

But your tiger isn't acting alone. Difficult as it is to split your concentration in so many ways, you have always been a quick-witted child. You can maintain your prana link with the tiger, keep your body reinforced, and coordinate with your wire-animal to make a two-pronged assault all at once. The baron has an eye on your position, but the majority of his concentration is in fending off the tiger. It's a mistake- you're actually the bigger threat here, but he doesn't know that.

You rush in as one, tiger on the left, with you on the right. Your tiger makes a menacing leap to crash his claws down onto the baron, forcing him to react. You use the opportunity to sneak up on the baron's flank to apply your decay. You're deceptively fast with your legs reinforced. It's this crucial detail that leads to your triumph.

The baron's wind spell finally connects with the tiger in midair, blowing it to shreds. You feel the link dissipate and the baron starts to turn his attention to you, but it's too late. You're already in range. He throws up the same wind shield he used initially, but you're not attacking him physically. You slam your hands into the ground, concentrating as hard as you can to extend your decay as far as possible from the center of your body.

A purple fog rises from the ground around you. Your combination of willpower and prana is so thick, it's manifested into the physical world. It fast expands and clogs the entire corridor, leaving no avenue for escape or evasion. The mist does nothing to you, but the baron immediately collapses to one knee when the fog wraps around him like an oppressive blanket. You can't see him through the haze, but you can hear his wretched screams.

Skill improved: Healing and Decay C-
New spell: Plague Mist

You let the mist die out to make sure you haven't killed him. You need answers to give to Joseph. Killing a noble will do you no favors if you don't have evidence of his corruption. When it clears, you see the baron collapsed in a heap on the ground in a pool of his own blood. He's moaning in pain, evidence that he's not quite dead. You try to hide your own tired panting. That Plague Mist took quite a lot of willpower to use.

You keep your reinforcement going, not wanting to be unpleasantly surprised, as you step forward and lean down to get a better look at your opponent. He glares up at you from the ground, spitting in your face as a last act of defiance. You grimace and wipe off the drool, conjuring a set of bronze wires to tie him up and confiscating his wand. Once you're sure he poses no threat, you let your reinforcement drop with a sigh.

Skill improved: Reinforcement D

He continues to glare daggers at you. "You idiot! You have no idea what you've done!"

So. What now?

[ ] Q&A with the baron. What do you want to ask? (check as many as you like)
- [ ] The egg?
- [ ] The underground bunker?
- [ ] The shrine?
- [ ] The attacks, and the request for help?
- [ ] More things? (Write-in.)
[ ] Get rid of him, take the egg and leave. (Kill him.)
[ ] Stuff him in a closet somewhere, take the egg and leave.
[ ] Something else. (Write-in.)

1-25: Tiger+0
26-50: Tiger+1
51-75: Tiger+2
76-100: Tiger+3
101+: Tiger+4

1-25: Decay+0
26-50: Decay+1
51-75: Decay+2
76-100: Decay+3
101+ecay+4

1-25: Reinforcement+0
26-50: Reinforcement+1
51-75: Reinforement+2
76-100: Reinforcement+3
101+: Reinforcement+4

 

[overmind]

[X] Q&A with the baron. What do you want to ask? (check as many as you like)
- [X] The egg?
- [X] The underground bunker?
- [X] The shrine?
- [X] The attacks, and the request for help?
afterwards:
[X] Get rid of him, take the egg and leave. (Kill him.)

Also, since we got reinforcement+4 shouldn't our reinforcement be upgraded like with our healing and decay?

 

[Inara Seraph]

Also, since we got reinforcement+4 shouldn't our reinforcement be upgraded like with our healing and decay?

Click to shrink...

Just for you, and for the sake of being consistent. A lil' edit.