"I am immediately incredibly jealous of him and desire to overtake him, but that's normal for me. But I know better than that - anyone known by a title like that has no doubt made plentiful use of the perception-shifting magic or whatever it is that I figured out. Too powerful to defeat for now.
Was the king a former mortal, like us?"
talkatalk
"He was not Hellborn, but I do not know what his mortal form was. Many have guessed, assumed he was Alexander the great or some other well known conqueror.I do not know though."
John sits by the improvised showcase and rests.
- I'm leaving the negotiations up to you guys, but feel free to throw in a few more spears or swords if this will sway them the right way - just explain that it would require me to make a roundtrip to get those. Also consider mentioning other stuff if this is necessary to get us what we want.
Look at the Lupine we are negotiating with. It was mentioned that they wear some sort of white cloaks, I believe? Are any of them different from others? Any obvious leader among them right now?
There are no obvious candidates for leaders here; no one with a big fancy hat to denote that at least. You do your best to see if they seem to be deferring to the opinions of any particular member of the group over any other but there seems to be no stand out there either. Maybe they don't have a leader?
Shrugging his shoulders and casting his eyes downward, Hyenakles adopts an almost folksy variation upon his typical hyena dialect. After a pause, during which he sort of paces a bit as if in thought, he addressed the Lupines.
"Look- Lupines. You're canids. I'm... Basically a canid. I might not know your language- our language?- but I do know that if you go far enough back, we might as well be family. I get where you're coming from- you're hard workers. You worked hard for that food, and I respect that. I respect it because I understand- folks like us value an honest living.
And that's why I'm offering you such a steal on these arms. These are top-notch weapons- and in this day and dimension, that may well make the difference between life and death. Your children's life and death. And what's more precious to you-those excess food stores, or your children?"
Finagle
Explain to the lupines that these are the weapons I spoke of, pointing at John's quaint storefront imitation. Handle trade negotiations.
[5]
Your rather lack luster attempts to sway their judgement seems to have paid off. They offer you a large supply of preserved food, water and alcohol in return for your cache of weapons.
"Sounds like we'll be passing through the empire at some point anyway, if we aren't already. Think you could take us to the center of it, if we wanted to go? And how did you end up on a jeep in the first place?"
Talky talky talky
"I could try, but such things may have shifted. It has been quite a long time."
"I was part of the crew on a war machine. We fought for many years but eventually the machine fell. I was scavenged from the wreckage by locals and passed through many hands and many machines until I wound up there. In the harshness of these hells, engine spirits are prized for our ability to keep machines running. I assume my brethren, if they survived, met similar fates."
Check the rifle for aiming. Is it just plain old iron sights, or is there a slider for different ranges? Root around corpses to see if there's a scope or something there.
It appears to have a space for a scope, or at least something, but as it is, all it has is a simple iron sight. You root around but can find no scopes here. Hmm, the engine spirit did talk about how there must have been a battle near by. Maybe there's a battlefield you can scavenge?
((Hitchhiking. Hitchhiking through the great Unknown.))
((Mmm, probably, having a bunch of redshirts to staff the warbeast would mess with the message a bit.
Ahh well, let's see how it goes.
You know what? Let's ask PW, Yo, PW, wadd'ya think about this idea of using the warbeast as a party bus for background PCs?))
My problem is: What happens if the warbeast dies? Or if you guys get attacked? Shouldn't some crew die in the attack? Do I just kill off waitlisters? If the war beast dies, we'd be left with a giant crowd to account for.
I like the idea in it's way, but I think I'd prefer to keep things as they are. Because there are definite benefits to having characters come in from the civs you visit. Namely, it's a way to get information on the area since I can give those players inside info that they would know. Like Mr.Bird's ability to speak the Lupine language, for instance.