Masters of Manipulation Turn
Name: Trisha
Appearance: Small, frail-looking girl with a perpetual cough. 5'2" 100 pounds, brown hair and eyes. Delicate.
Size: 5 feet 2 inches
HP: 20 + 1 = 21
Current HP: 9/21
Movement: 20 + 1 = 21
Encumbrance: 2
Protection: 0
Endurance: 1 (½)
Strength: 1 (½)
Speed: 2
Agility: 2
Dexterity: 2
Stealth: 3)
Perception: 2 (3/4)
Persuasion: 3 (4/6)
Manipulation: 3 (4/6)
Equipment: +1 grey shirt, +1 black pants
Inventory: 15 coppers
Followers: 3 devoted followers, 4 animated skeletons
Shack Inventory: 10 food items, 8 men’s commoner clothing outfits, 8 chairs, 2 beds, 2 tables, plates, silverware, 4 wooden logs
(Manipulation roll 15+3=18) (Manipulation roll 12+3=15) (Manipulation roll 16+3=19) (-8 health) Raw energy arcs out from your hands, hitting the skeletons and combating the magic that animates them. Within a few moments all of undead have been successfully dominated and now stand around you forming a protective guard while awaiting any simple orders you may wish to give. It’s really starting to become apparent to you why your teacher wasn’t a major power in the world. You go about checking the rest of the sarcophaguses to find that most are empty but ten of them still contain unanimated skeletons which could potentially be useful for later. Marching up to the altar with your retinue, you quickly understand where much of the funding your master had over the years went to. The gold base is welded to the altar but in itself isn’t that impressive. Any competent Manipulation practitioner could create or transmute gold if they had the time and energy. What is impressive though is the crystal orb. Just approaching the mysterious sphere, you feel powerful energies radiating out from it. As if sensing your presence, it begins to glow faintly and a voice calls out from it,
“Hello mortal, a pleasure to make your acquaintance I’m sure. Don’t be nervous now, I won’t bite. Can’t bite really, I’m in another dimension.”
Expecting some sort of demonic deal, you’re temporarily unsure how to respond. Before you can the voice continues on.
“Oh don’t worry, you don’t have to talk to me. Its not like I’m sitting around on the other side here waiting for people to come communicate through orbs. The old man who owned this before made a few minor pacts with me for small little tokens but he wasn’t too interesting. Real small time guy. Anyway, no pressure to talk right now but feel free to come back later if you’re in the mood for some mutually beneficial business.”
Name: Skeleton
Appearance: All bones
Size: ?
HP: 20 + 1 / 2bones = 11
Current HP: 11/11
Movement: 20 + 4 = 24 x 1.5bones = 36
Endurance: 0
Encumbrance: 0
Protection: 0
Strength: 0
Speed: 4
Agility: 2
Dexterity: 0
Stealth: 0
Perception: 0
Persuasion: 0
Manipulation:
Equipment: +2 Sword
Inventory:
Name: Sahal Adnarei
Appearance: Even tallish for an Elv, Sahal sports (painfully cared for) silken skin in a bronze hue, skillfully braided (and not less cared for) auburn hair at buttocks length - most often accompanied by a diadem of some sorts - and deep-set eyes of limegreen coloration.
Size: 6 feet 4 inches
HP: 20+2= 22
Current HP: 22/22
Movement: 20+2= 22
Encumbrance: 2
Protection: 3
Endurance: 2
Strength: 2
Speed: 2
Agility: 2
Dexterity: 2
Stealth: 1
Perception: 2 (¼)
Persuasion: 2 (¼)
Manipulation: 1 (½)
Equipment: +2 (+ cold resistance) brown fur long coat, +1 fur underclothing
Inventory: 10 coppers
Followers: 8 burly men
The meat was poisoned. You bought it at a store meant for killing annoying strays. The dog jerks about for a bit before falling limply to the ground and you smile while setting to work. (Manipulation roll 20+1=21) Absorbing the dog’s essence into your own, your skin temporarily shifts rather unsettlingly before resetting with a beautiful new luster (Higher chance to get persuasion bonuses with those attracted to your gender). That completed, you set out to the extraction point to meet with your fellow patriots. The large transport shuttle hums vigorously as its boarding gear deploys neatly in front of you. You step aboard followed by your eight burly subordinates all armed with various deadly looking weapons, mostly melee but a few lightning arc blasters as well which should be nice. The last two smile broadly while lugging behind a large heavy looking crate with wheels. You’re unsure whether you should be happy that Sir Stahl took your suggestion so to heart or annoyed that in order to do so, he seems to have completely forgone subtlety.
While flying, you get to know your crew a bit. It seems they’re all very competent soldiers but with little tact when it comes to infiltration missions. Several of them have intimidating battle scars and all are ridiculously burly to the point of comedy. (Please don’t ask me to name them all haha, back stories for minions is too much work). One in particular seems a little more intelligent than the other brutes and you’re pleased to find he will be serving as your second in command. You’ll get to know him when you land.
The ship lands and you disembark, gazing around at the crummy looking district you’ve been assigned to. It’s larger than you were lead to believe but it really lacks culture. A frightening thought comes to you that there might not even be any good beautification shops in a place like this. A cold shiver runs down your spine. At least the boss set you up with a decent looking base of operations. Bedrooms for everyone and yours looks especially nice. There’s a main meeting room, a kitchen, two bathrooms and several other small areas that can be set aside for whatever. Also a large basement perfect for any ‘pet projects’ you may have.
“Sir, Major Amico reporting for duty.”
He passes you a small handheld cube.
“That’s for communicating back to base. Seems like the better job we do stamping out the lowlifes, the better equipment we’ll get from HQ.”
Escaped Lurker: I rather stupidly forgot to tell you that something has to be willing or dead before you can perform a 'drain' Manipulation on it. To compensate, I made the meat poisoned
. Next time though, if you were to try that, you would first need to kill the animal because animals are never 'willing' to be sacrificed unlike some devoted sentient followers.
Alright ladies and gents. Going to try and do more frequent updates regardless of whether all turns are in, so just do your best and I'll do mine.
Also I'm going to simplify things a little bit for my own sake and so I can spend more time writing updates and less on book keeping:
No more "weight" encumbrance. I'll probably be implementing a 'light', 'medium', 'heavy' type of system where 'light' has no penalties, 'medium' reduces speed and agility by 1/4 and 'heavy' by 1/2. The latter two will of course have much higher base protection attributes to compensate for that and if it's unbalanced, I'll change things. *Feedback appreciated as always.
No more time keeping. Might do more frequent posts for some players if they give less actions to perform in a turn just to keep things balanced but overall you should all be getting more updates so long as you keep providing actions.
Skeleton stats are getting cut down. Bones shouldn't have that much health.