A Knocking Afar (IC Thread)

[Black Cohort]

"If we strike we would have to take them all."

[Akylas]

"I know a little of their crude tongue if we want to try to take a prisoner. I imagine there is no use trying to talk to them peacefully"

[Mazer Rackham]

Soairse:

 

The inaction, the deep, intractible caution prickled, but thinking of her situation and comrades bound her choler. SHe was not amongst Wild-Riders now, those considered savage by even these austere kin, would have screamed from the hiding places with that ululating cry for ten-thousand years of terror to be released and visited on their new foes, but her companions were neither wild, nor savage, and in the Eldar way, all had a voice.

 

=Perhaps then, we should consider withdrawal as soon as possible. Whispers on the aether suggest our true quarry is not here. Where, I know not, but not here.=

 

 

[Akylas]

"Would it be worth following them? Or would that just take us further away from our fated path?"

[A.T.]

Ialandranth Veilseeker

 

"If we could so stray then it would not be fate". Ialandrath watched the humans as they gathered their own, not looking for anything more. "We should seek the guardians."

[Mazer Rackham]

Saoirse:

 

He was right. The mortal humans were an impermanence, a temporary intrigue - for now. The guardians' absence was far more concerning.

[Trokair]

One by one you slip away from the shore side, gathering to the north east of your initial emergence point. Of all the tracks that lead away the oldest that Ialandranth has found seem the most promising, being some four or five days old while the rest was perhaps only two days or less.

 

@A.T. Can I have two Tracking Tests please, one at Challenging (0) and one at Routine (+20).

Anybody else is also free to make a Challenging (0) Awareness if they want, and if the party wishes to move stealthily a Ordinary (+10) Silent Move or Concealment Test from each player.

Edited October 2 by Trokair

[Mazer Rackham]

Saoirse:

 

Silent Move: AG 59 + 10 = 69

D100: 41, PASS plus 2 DoS (Unnat AG x 2)

[Mike Zulu]

Ialathial Duskstrider:

 

His suggestion seemed to have planted a seed of hesitation. In truth, he could not forsee how pursuing that lead would provide answers.

 

“+Perhaps I should shackle my curiosity,+” Ialathial admitted. ”+The guardians shall take priority.+”

 

Ialathial looked across the way, spotting Ialadranth in his search for clues or traces. Once confident that no humans were nearby, the Dire Avenger made his move…

 

Spoiler

Silent Move: 46 (Ag) + 10 = 56 required

Roll d100: 55 = Pass, 0DoS

 

… He accidentally disturbed a large fern as he shifted his catapult, the giant leaf springing back and rebounding as it came free. After a short moment, convinced he was not spotted, Ialathial continued stealthily to regroup with the others.

 

+++

 

Spoiler

Awareness Test: 37 (Per) + 10 (HS Sight) = 47 required

Roll d100: 98 = Fail, 5DoF

 

Ialathial studied the verdant foliage with a great fascination, but was of no aid to the team’s tracking efforts.

 

Shackle your curiosity…

[A.T.]

Ialandranth Veilseeker

 

So many paths to follow, were they destined all the same or was their fate beset on all sides by hidden peril. And for all the tracks of the humans there was no trace of the true threat that had pursued them here.

 

 

Tracking normal: 49 vs target 30 (fail)

Tracking easy: 11 vs target 50 (pass)

 

Stealth: 41 vs 62 (pass, plus unnatural ag bonuses)

Edited October 6 by A.T.

[Akylas]

Kelman attempts to move silently, but stumbles on a muddy patch and catches himself with all the grace of a rhinox and quite some noise as the branch he reaches for snaps.

 

Silent Move AG 45+10 (ordinary) = 55

Roll 1d100 = 87

[Black Cohort]

Ven is hardly skilled at stealth and is not really successful.

 

Awareness 42 roll 60

 

Silent Move 22 roll 46

[Trokair]

 

The tracks lead you north easterly from the sparse woodland by the lake into grassland plains and rolling hills on your horizon. At times the way forward is unclear, no sign of passing that can be discerned. However in a landscape so devoid of people, whether human or elder, even the smallest traces of non natural presence stands out. 

 

As the day creeps into early evening you begin to tire. While you are not yet attuned to the natural day and night cycle of this world, your Eldar constitution would carry you far past a single day if your journey had begun at dawn. Alas you have had only minimal rest since the Ur-Ghul skirmish. Perhaps it was this as much unfamiliarity with the locality that left your own trail plain to read, for you at least when looking back. Perhaps humans would be blind to it, if there were any in pursuit.

 

 

Do you try and find a place to rest, or do you push on? If resting, just for a little while or all night?

 

If moving on I need a further Challenging (0) Tracking test. If resting for a while then it becomes an Ordinary (+10), if waiting until morning it becomes a Routine (+20).

Whenever you do move on any player who wishes can make a Challenging (0) Awareness test, and as before if you are trying to move with steal I need some combination of Ordinary (+10) Silent Move or Concealment Test from each player. (Black Cohort, you have a camoline cloak if memory serves, so for you a concealment test should pan out better than silent move).

[Mazer Rackham]

Saoirse:

 

Two of her comrades slipped and slid. She nearly did so herself. Aches traversed her skull, the helm usually so light was a fraction heavier, and the travelling robes still damp from the impromptu submersion were threatening to trip her up.

 

She was just glad they were deep green, and provided some mirror to the flora and fauna about. It was a risk, but she had to stop. She wouldn't be rude and use telepathy. A whisper into the microbead located in her helmet would do.

 

'Friends, your pardon. I must rest a moment, though our path is fraught with peril.'

 

Choosing a branch sturdy enough for her fae-weight, she sat, deftly doffing her casque, to reveal the scents and sounds of the forest to her own mortal ears. The divorce of sense enforced by the wraithbone vanished, and the ruddy scent of tree bark and wet earth rapidly stilled her mind. Armed with the breeze, and the grounding of immersion to nature, Saoirse unlimbered her stillwater flask, and took a mouthful.

 

Satisfied, she drew in lungfuls of the planet's air, concentrating.

 

Psychic Power: Augury:

Fettered, Auto Pass, no DoS (Calc is 1/2 PR, with DoS being 1D5-1 = 0 DoS).

 

OOC: I'll take suggestions on the query I'm asking the 'Warp' (GM).

 

OOC: As per the OOC discussion, my questions will be 'Which way to the Guardians?' and 'Do the humans pursue us?'

 

Edited October 15 by Mazer Rackham

[Trokair]

Saoirse

 

Settling into a meditative trance is easy enough and much practised, but the days weariness tug at you, slumber an inviting summons. Resistance to the call is hard, but step by metaphorical step you push towards the mind state needed to gase upon the skein offate and bluck its strings to see where they led.

 

The strings however elude you here, the future a nothingness that will not unveil itself. That which had troubled the Farseer so back on Dandrame still held fast. However there was more than one direction to follow a thread, and while the yet to be was silent, that which had been could be coaxed forth. Though with the same caveats as any reading of the fates, that it was but a possible past.

 

The distance past will be as obscure as the future, but the recent should bear truer. You focuse on the now, on the heartbeat just past, the minutes ago as you sat in concentration, the hour just expired. You watch yourself arrive at this place, and again from a slightly different path, and again but in a different order of march. All however close enough that you can go further, rolling back the sun across the sky. You see the morning, and dozens of initiations of the lakeside scene. You narrow in one a handful where you and yours move much as you remember, discarding many a branching strand where the party was embroiled in combat with the humans.

 

Wading backwards into the water is a wired experience, almost throwing you back into the now. You reach the gate over and over, grasping for, reaching and almost slipping away at the strands of the gate itself, to follow it further, another day, a scant few more until a guardian is there, slumbering the eons.

 

Its strands are slippery on the skein, for it is a Wraith Construct housing a spirit stone and soul whose fate had long ended. You almost lose your hold entirely. Yet beat you are not, for it has cost much to get here and you will it not to be for naught.

 

A single strand of the guardian you grasp, and it instantly frays, but you pull along it, forward now. Flashes of the other guardian, aslumber ashore, then nothing. A multitude of stirrings, wakening, wading into shallows. A cascade of the same few days, all snowflakes. Humans in the ruins, dying in the ruins, fleeing hither and dither and any which way. In all aftermaths the guardian cannot find its companion, does not know why it is silent, why it is gone. The outcome a seeking and following of humans.

 

Here you can begin to discard hundreds of past futures, for you know which wind you yourself had followed and trodden away from here, and thus once more you have but a handful of treads to unpick and pull your spirit along, north easterly, more northerly? easterly?

 

Twice, trice, a dozen times the treads run out into oblivion, forcing you backtrack and pick anew, your weary mind reduced, now  not much more than remnants of a itself, a little girl, lost in the great wilds.

 

The world turns translucent, shaded white, immaterial fogs where stars burned not in the heavens but here and there. Five bright in the gentle valley below, duller ones leagues and leagues away. A smattering of dark and twisted suns trouble you a while, but drawn to five bright ones again and again, the brightest fading, dying!

 

The world resumes its realness, solid.  Saoirse Firebright once more, chilled to the heart, the rhyme and frost falling of your body as your rise.

 

 

So I got a little carried away in answering the first question that I am not sure how to work the second one in at this hour of a long day. So you may conclude in however way you wish that the humans at the lakeside did not follow or pursue you, nor discerned a trace of you havening been there.

Edited October 15 by Trokair

[Mazer Rackham]

Saoirse:

 

OOC: Using the Telepathic link we share, I will pass the images along, minus any discomfort. Eldar having a metaphorical/visual 'language' might help the others to chime in with ideas and thoughts (Player/group interaction).

 

WP: 45, Fettered Auto-pass.

[A.T.]

Ialandranth Veilseeker

 

The sense of such a clouded and darkened fate was curiously exhilarating, but perhaps deceptive. Was this a true choice or the shadow of something far larger that played a game beyond even their grasp. 

 

"We have a goal, but no sign of our pursuit, and we must consider that this path may take us into the settlements of the humans sooner or later."

[Trokair]

I believe the group choice was rest for the entire night, so it is now morning, and then move NE based on Saoirse’s experience.

To progress into the day please can I have a Routine (+20) Tracking Test.

Any player who wishes to do so can make a Challenging (0) Awareness test.

Furthermore, if as a group you are still trying to move with stealth, then I need some combination of Ordinary (+10) Silent Move or Ordinary (+10) Concealment Test from each player.

[Mike Zulu]

Ialathial Duskstrider:

 

Ialathial was too enthralled by the seer's psychic missive to focus on his surroundings, once they began moving again. 

It was a tale of tragedy he would have taken great enjoyment during his prior life. Until it became all too real...

 

Spoiler

Awareness Test: 37 (Per) + 10 (HS Sight) = 47 required

Roll d100: 76 = Fail, 2DoF

 

Silent Move: 46 (Ag) + 10 = 56 required

Roll d100: 10 = Pass, 4DoS

 

He shook his head, feeling the mask slipping. He needed to return to the here and now.

 

"The one we seek seemed convinced that the humans were responsible. For better or worse, a confrontation is highly probable."

 

"Saoirse, it occurs to me that many of your Path are guides for... the dead." Ialathial shuddered at the suggestion, but continued. "Is this... something you can do?"

[Mazer Rackham]

Saoirse:

 

Upon hearing her name, she looked up at the Dire Avenger, letting her posture show she accepted the use of her name by him. It marked many things, and the Weave slowly smiled in the background music of her existence. Saoirse would reply in the same candour, unable to miss the tremble of his distaste for the subject.

 

'I know of the Wraithseers, indeed, yet it is a path which my Kin of Saim-Hann know little. We prefer to lay our...displaced...into world matrices. It is a path fraught with dangers, Ialathial, and it is easy to lose oneself in the bitter sorrow of a soul walking among ghosts - for they are apart only physically. The lament of a race is a dreadful thing, a mire of despair and faded echoes.'

 

She paused a moment, listening for echo, for sign the universe was paying attention. The Warlock still had to guard the secrets of the Path, yet, to withhold now was, somehow, churlish.

 

Awareness: 23 Pass, Plus 1 DoS

Silent Move when we go: 39, Pass plus 2 DoS min (Unnat AG)

 

'Yet, all things are connected in the Fabric,' she chose the latter word deliberately, accompanied by her right hand in gesture - fingers spread into a fan, which dextrously  collapsed into a pinch of slender digits - the vowels and accents giving it not one, but three meanings, 'and I am able to pull the threads.'

 

Another race would lose her meaning in translation, the eloquent circumvention of the Aeldari tongue as good as darkness in obfuscation, but respectful even to the Eldar ear, which would understand it and appreciate the mellifluous cadence. She gently studied the Dire Avenger to see how her reply landed.

 

Edited Tuesday at 04:48 PM by Mazer Rackham

[A.T.]

Ialandranth Veilseeker

 

Echoes of the divination faded quickly but Ialandranth remained focussed on the points of light beyond, marking the position of the sun and mountains to use as guides should they need to take a more indirect route.

 

The landscape here was easily enough for one as agile as an Eldar to navigate but exposed to the eyes of the humans.

 

Tracking: 35 (target 50, pass)

Awareness: 79 (fail)

Stealth: 31 (pass)

[Akylas]

Better rested and focusing on his immediate surroundings, Kelman manages to move more quietly but remains no more aware of anything beyond a silent path.

 

Spoiler

Silent Move AG 45+10 (ordinary) = 55

Roll d100 = 40 = pass

 

Awareness 42 + 0 (challenging) = 42

Roll d100 = 78 = fail