[WFRP] The Bloody Crown OOC XV

[rax]

The first hit was also 12 wounds, shouldn't that net another 2 Wounds after armour and Toughness on the Body location?

Bardhyl can soak the damage from Orso's hit and still only be lightly wounded, but I reckon it's better if he can avoid it altogether. So, yeah - spending an FP to re-roll the Dodge.

(1d100)[16] vs. 55

[TheSummoner]

What's with all the damn 80's

[LCP]

The first hit was also 12 wounds, shouldn't that net another 2 Wounds after armour and Toughness on the Body location?

He has 10 soak on the body - but yes I did make a mistake, the 2nd hit was on the arm where he only has 8. Think that takes his wound total to 9.

[rax]

Finally! Two potential Ulric's Furies! I'd be much obliged if Orso were to fail his parry and dodge this time...

Confirm hit on Body: (1d100)[34]
Confirm hit on Right Arm: (1d100)[3]

Multiple extra damage rolls in case of confirmation and multiple 10s.
Hit on Body: (1d10)[1], (1d10)[9], (1d10)[9]
Hit on Right Arm: (1d10)[3], (1d10)[6], (1d10)[1]

The third, weaker attack, is a hit in the Right Leg.

Both hits confirmed.
Hit on Body does 10+5+1 = 16 Wounds.
Hit to Right Arm does 10+5+3 = 18 Wounds.

[TheSummoner]

I'm inclined to say that Sieghard isn't going to budge, but I want to make sure I understand the situation at least as much as he would before putting anything up IC. Twelve Iron Company men? Where are the rest of them? I thought he had thirty to forty. It's about 110 farmers watching from the sidelines. How many are at the doors of the mill itself? Are any in the crowd armed?

Sorry if this throws a wrench in things for everyone else, but there's no way out of this. Even setting aside personal reasons for not standing down, the only way this doesn't end in Corrado or someone else running to Sforza and painting Sieghard as a traitor for trying negotiation rather than slaughter is if every single one of the Iron Company men dies and Sieghard can control what information gets to Sforza. Probably about as far from what I wanted as I can think of, but that's just the way it is.

If it's not the sort of thing you'd answer, that's half expected, but I have to ask. If the dice had been better, would that have worked?

[LCP]

12 men is the side of the square facing the mill. The other ~38 men are facing in the other 3 directions. There are probably about 20 people in front of the door. It's impossible to be certain how many people in the crowd might be armed, but certainly some of them are - improvised weapons not weapons of war.

Re: the dice - there's no dice roll you've made here so far where I haven't had a rough idea of what the other outcome would be. At the same time, though, this is a fairly fundamental clash of interests - unless there's a convincing alternative path, successful tests mostly delay the conflict rather than solving it.

[LeSwordfish]

Yeah - I think really the only thing we could have done to avoid a massacre here was bring along all the Thorns and go full Secessionist here and now. Which maybe wouldn't have been the worst idea - we've got an awful lot of the Iron Company out of position between Bardhyl and here, and if we could Istvaan V Corrado's lot it might have been an effective opening to an anti-Sforza war. But we don't know what's going on in the Raven Hills and I don't think it's really where any of our characters are right now.

[TheSummoner]

12 men is the side of the square facing the mill. The other ~38 men are facing in the other 3 directions.

Hey, let's not go adding another 10+ men to the Iron Company. My chances here are bad enough.

Re: the dice - there's no dice roll you've made here so far where I haven't had a rough idea of what the other outcome would be. At the same time, though, this is a fairly fundamental clash of interests - unless there's a convincing alternative path, successful tests mostly delay the conflict rather than solving it.

I guess I'll take some comfort in the fact that this situation is more due to bad rolls than bad choices necessarily.

Yeah - I think really the only thing we could have done to avoid a massacre here was bring along all the Thorns and go full Secessionist here and now. Which maybe wouldn't have been the worst idea - we've got an awful lot of the Iron Company out of position between Bardhyl and here, and if we could Istvaan V Corrado's lot it might have been an effective opening to an anti-Sforza war. But we don't know what's going on in the Raven Hills and I don't think it's really where any of our characters are right now.

I mean, the goal was to avoid an anti-Sforza war and just arrange a few anti-Sforza coincidences. With any chance of that all but gone, I'll just count it as a win if this ends without Sieghard in chains and the farmers slaughtered. As for Bardhyl, he definitely said enough for Sieghard to know something's coming in the Raven Hills, but there's no way he'd know it's already started and it wouldn't be a factor in Sieghard's thinking even if there was.

[LCP]

Parry and Dodge for Orso:

(1d100)[68]
(1d100)[8]

[LCP]

+5 crit to the leg: (1d100)[67]

Blood Loss & Helpless

[Thragka]

As regards the situation in Manaan's Keep: I broadly agree with LeSwordfish, and this is playing out pretty much exactly how I expected. Barring a sudden brilliantly charismatic intervention by Sieghard with a lucky roll, since we didn't solve the problem before the troops were sent south, I figured we were going to see the tax revolt brutally put down. (As, I would say, did Urgrim! Perhaps that wasn't clear in his critique of Sieghard's handling of the situation.) It's what tends to happen when the local polity has to forcefully assert its material rights, or claims thereof.

I will say, though, that Sieghard taking a stand here is definitely drawing Urgrim on side in any ... protracted messiness that might result.

[TheSummoner]

That's good. I was dreading the "You swore an oath to obey your prince's orders, umgi" conversation almost as much as the fallout from all of this.

[TheSummoner]

I find myself struggling to come up with a good IC response for this. It'd be one thing if Corrado had attacked Sieghard for getting in his way, but Sieghard taking the first swing seems like a step too far into openly treasonous. Looking at it purely pragmatically, he's probably now on Sforza's sh*t list regardless, but when your main priority has been "avoid another war", becomes a lot harder to justify taking the first swing. Corrado obviously doesn't care about Sieghard outranking him and see's "Sforza says do this" as a pass to go about it however he wants and trying any other gambit just seems to fly in the face of the whole "you've got one shot at this" thing. At the same time, I really don't see him getting out of the way.

[rax]

Re the outranking thing, Sieghard doesn’t have much direct authority here in the first place. He’s not the lord here, Sussman is, and Sussman said ”do what needs to be done”.

The Reaches are also small enough and the hierarchy compressed enough that the Iron Company soldiers can clearly see that there’s really only one man in charge - their Captain. Sieghard and the other ”lords” are only in charge of their territories for as long as Sforza says so. Disrespecting or disobeying Sieghard while on a direct mission from the Prince is probably a non-issue for Corrado.

[Thragka]

I agree -- in terms of ranks and orders, Corrado is correct here. He's got direct orders from the Prince to get the taxes, which effectively means to supress the revolt, and Sieghard has orders from the Prince to support Corrado. Sieghard's interpretation that he's supporting Corrado to obtain the taxes by trying to defuse the situation is something he may have to justify to Sforza, but I can see how it doesn't really bear on what Corrado sees as his duty right now.

And I think Corrado's men know this, too: they serve within Sforza's military structure, and they're immediately answerable to Corrado and ultimately to Sforza. Right now, to them, Sieghard is just a shouty man arguing with their commander, near a group of other shouty men and women arguing with their commander, although possibly one they need to treat with a softer touch. Nonetheless, their commander is telling them what to do (which is something they're trained to do), so they're about to do it.

Pragmatically, we're not going to stop Corrado from getting what he wants here -- not unless our 3 PCs and handful of Thorns can beat 40 trained Iron Company soldiers in a fight, which we can't.

[LCP]

He cares about Sieghard outranking him enough not to lay hands on him - hope that was clear from my post. But yeah, if he has direct orders from Sforza, coming back to Savonne empty-handed and saying a bigger boy wouldn't let him is going to get him in more trouble than a letter from Sieghard saying he was rude will. You can imagine how Sforza might respond to one of your characters trying to pass the buck in that way.

Re: one shot, that means neither party is now persuadable by just arguing at them more. You're free to try anything else you might think of. And if you don't have any ideas, maybe Sieghard doesn't either. It's fine for him to not always have a clever solution. Maybe this is just a situation where he has to decide what he can live with.

also god dammit the site is still chugging.

[TheSummoner]

I mean more in terms of Sforza said what to do. Sieghard is saying how to do it while avoiding contradicting what Sforza said to do because doing that would definitely be a non-starter.

Pragmatically, we're not going to stop Corrado from getting what he wants here -- not unless our 3 PCs and handful of Thorns can beat 40 trained Iron Company soldiers in a fight, which we can't.

40 at most, possibly as low as 30, but likely somewhere in the middle. And there's somewhere in the ballpark of 120 farmers gathered around them plus however many are at the doors of the mill itself. It's not something I want to test, but I wouldn't count out what a group outnumbering the Iron Company at least 3 to 1 could do if Corrado were to suddenly catch a case of sword down throat disease.

But as I said, I'm not initiating that. Trying to order him isn't going to work so all I can think of that might is trying to use his ego against him. Might still fall under arguing but I can't just pull a distraction out of nowhere and it at least gets a post up.

On a completely unrelated note, Dune is fantastic.

[Thragka]

Strength test for Urgrim: Strength 49 - (1d100)[63]

To be honest, I think I’ll save the 50-50 shot on the Fortune point and just roll with the failure. This is a fantastic moment in the narrative, so let’s see how it plays out!

[rax]

Sorry for not responding during the weekend. I'm aiming to get an IC post up tomorrow (Monday).

[Thragka]

I have a small handful of work deadlines this week which I did not quite manage to get ahead of at the weekend, so I'm likely to be pretty busy until Wednesday or Thursday.

[rax]

@LCP

Quick question - would it be possible for Bardhyl to punch out the surrendering Tilean for cinematic effect, without rolling any dice? (Because Strike to Stun just won't cut it vs. a man in a helmet )

[LCP]

Sounds fair to me.

[rax]

Updated my IC post.

Obviously there's lots more that Bardhyl needs to do to resolve matters in the hall and town, but a wee break in the action to deal with what appears to be Kreshnik's imminent death seemed appropriate.

[LCP]

TheSummoner, RossN, are you still with us?

[TheSummoner]

I am, but I thought you were just wanting the strength test from Jarla and Urgrim. My mistake.

There's really nothing Sieghed can do at this point so there's no real reason for him to stay in the middle of this. What sort of roll would you want for him to try to get someone whose fallen out of there as well so they don't get trampled?

[RossN]

I am sorry! Incredibly draining week at work. Still trying to et my creative juices back.

Strength: (1d100)[74] vs 40

[Thragka]

Just posting to say that I've survived my own draining work week (well, as long as irony doesn't strike in the next eight hours) so, I'm here too.

[LCP]

Sorry, yes - I was assuming Sieghard would have an immediate reaction.

What sort of roll would you want for him to try to get someone whose fallen out of there as well so they don't get trampled?

Straight Strength seems appropriate.

[TheSummoner]

**** it.

Probably still the wrong choice tactically, but I'm mad now.

[LCP]

Oho! That's vs Corrado I take it?