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Myth: A New Age CYOA

archaen

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Mar 10, 2014
Messages
633
I'll flop
1.Aiv > Aii
10. H > E

I was thinking for the portal we use Jan and one other mage from the academy that he trusts the most. I believe we only needed five to open the portal.

Did we want to arrange anything special for Melete? It irks me that it looks like we are going to have to leave her asleep for another month.
 

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I was thinking for the portal we use Jan and one other mage from the academy that he trusts the most. I believe we only needed five to open the portal.
Eight. Yeah, I am trying to come up with a solution for that, too, but for now such a trip does not look affordable.

Did we want to arrange anything special for Melete? It irks me that it looks like we are going to have to leave her asleep for another month.
I don't know what can be done about her, safe for the ritual. It's either solving the situation in the south, or solving our personal problem.
 

Fangshi

Arcane
Joined
Jan 9, 2014
Messages
1,997
Absinthe said:
Actually, I was asking about the cock.

From what little you can find out about the maul the answer is yes. He has fought mages before. You do not know if he owns any magical items but as a mercenary captain it he is likely to.

Current Tally:

Nevill:
1. Aiv
2. C
3. B
4. B
5. B
6. B
7. A
8. Ai
9. A(20) B(40) D(2) H(20)
10. H
11. C (spellbooks)
12. B

Kz3r0:
1. D>Aii
2. Ai
3. B
4. C
5. B
6. C
7. A
8. Aii
9. A(40) G(20) H(20)
10. E
11. C (Spare spellbooks)
12. B

Grimgravy:
1. B
2. B
3. Aii
4. B
5. B
6. B
7. B
8. A
9. A(10) B(20) C(10) F(15) G(10) H(20) I(2)
10. E
11. E
12. x

Azira:
1. Aii
2. Ai
3. B
4. B
5. B
6. B
7. A
8. Ai
9. none
10. F
11. C>D>E
12. x

archaen:
1. Aiv>Aii
2. C>Aii
3. B
4. C
5. B
6. B
7. A
8. A
9. A(40) B(40)
10. H>E
11. D>C (spellbooks)
12. A

GreyViper:
1. Aii
2. Aii
3. B
4. B
5. B
6. B
7. A
8. Aii
9. A(40) D(5) G(20) H(20)
10. E
11. C (Spare spellbooks)
12. x

Absinthe:
1. Ai
2. B
3. B
4. C
5. B
6. B
7. B
8. B
9. E (5)
10. H
11. C (spellbooks)
12. B

Jester:
1. Aii>Aiv
2. C
3. B
4. B
5. B
6. C
7. A
8. Ai
9. A(40) B(40) C(10) D(2) E(5) G(10) H(20) I(10)
10. B
11. C (Halcyon Stone)
12. B

1. Interrogation
3 votes Aii
2 votes Aiv
1 vote Ai
1 vote B
1 vote D

2. The Doves
3 votes C
2 votes Ai
2 votes B
1 vote Aii

3. The Bastards
7 votes B
1 vote Aii

4. The Cocks
5 votes B
3 votes C

5. The Knights
8 votes B

6. The Hounds
6 votes B
2 vote C

7. The Greys
6 votes A
2 votes B

8. The Boys
3 votes Ai
2 votes Aii
2 votes Ax
1 vote B

9. Unaffiliated Mercenaries
Dwarfs:
A)Grenadiers - 6/8 votes: 4 votes for forty, 1 vote for twenty, 1 vote for ten
B)Warriors - 4/8 votes: 3 votes for forty, 1 vote for twenty
C)Crossbowmen - 2/8 votes: 2 votes for ten
D)Mortars - 3/8 votes: 1 vote for five, 2 votes for two
E)Enchanters - 2/8 votes: 2 votes for five

Humans:
F)Sellswords - 1/8 votes: 1 vote for fifteen
G)Archers - 4/8 votes: 2 votes for twenty, 2 votes for ten
H)Legionaries - 5/8 votes: 5 votes for twenty

Mauls:
I)Warriors - 2/8 votes: 1 vote for two, 1 vote for ten

10. the maid
3 votes H
2 votes E
1 vote B
1 vote F
1 vote D

11. the loan
6 votes C (one general, four for spellbooks and one for the Halcyon Stone)
1 vote D
1 vote E

12. the gate
5 votes for B
1 vote for A
2 votes undeclared.

At the moment your options look like the following:

1. For the interrogation you will use your mental spells to break the prince and take what you want.

2. You will express interest in hiring the Doves but you will not recruit them until your finances improve/you know more about them.

3. You will not recruit the Bastards.

4. You will not recruit the Cocks.

5. You will not recruit the Knights.

6. You will not recruit the Hounds.

7. You will recruit the Greys. Gaining 500WPs and possibly 70WPS per month.

8. You will hire the Boys for 25WPs a month.

9. You will hire some of the unaffiliated mercenaries:

- Forty dwarven grenadiers at 20WPs a month.

- Forty dwarven warriors at 10WPs a month.

- Currently tied - Either Ten human archers at 15WPs or twenty human archers at 30WPs

- Twenty human legionaries at 20WPs a month.

10. You will attempt to turn the maid into a double agent.

11. You will take out another loan (of 300WPs) with Mayer to help pay down your debt with the Goldsmiths a little faster. He will hold off on collecting till your other debts are paid and he will charge a flat rate of interest on the loan. He reserves the right to ask you for a favour in exchange for not charging the usual compound interest. You reserve the right to refuse the favour and pay the difference instead. You will give him your accumulated extra spellbooks to act as a guarantee on the loan. These include: the Elemental Tome, the Worn Book, 'Golems for dummies', the half dozen unsorted spell pages, Gullveig's tome and the five spellbooks written in the language of the Spider Goddess. The Purple Sun scroll you will hold on to as it is potentially worth far more than 300WPs. Mayer will not attempt to sell the books unless you die or disappear and the loan can not be repaid through other means.

12. You will not open a gate to Muirthemne at the moment, perhaps something for later.

I will give the vote another twenty four hours or so and then close things up.
 

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
The Worn Book is not a spellbok, and it is not worth much to anyone except Derryth (and to her, it is worth more than the Halcyon stone, since she mentioned that Henry is in the book). I would exclude it from the list of items on loan.

Does anyone have an interest in exchanging (emphasis on exchange, i.e. not both) the archers in the list above for 2 mortars? Same money, better pay-off, and looking at the choices, we already have Greys for archers, but no mortars.

Anyone else is up to trying to solve the situation with Wenzel without resorting to mind-breaking spells? I know Kz3r0, Grimgravy and Absinthe expressed an interest in this, though there is no single opinion on how to go about this.

I'd keep the spells as a last resort 'if all else fails', since this inconveniences us almost as much as it does Wenzel.
 
Last edited:

Fangshi

Arcane
Joined
Jan 9, 2014
Messages
1,997
Nevill said:
The Worn Book is not a spellbok, and it is not worth much to anyone except Derryth (and to her, it is worth more than the Halcyon stone, since she mentioned that Henry is in the book). I would exclude it from the list of items on loan.

The worn book is Golems for Dummies. It is a spellbook. Henry's book is 'A Weathered Book, On the Cycles of Light and Dark' (speaking of which, can't believe I have had the formating on the book title wrong this whole time without noticing... :oops:).

I actually moved all of your non magical notes/letters/books to a separate subheading to prevent confusion. Looks like it didn't work... :negative:
 

Kz3r0

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2008
Messages
27,013
Voring in favor of ten archers to breack the tie.
And changing my vote to 1 Aiv, only because breacking Wenzel could give us troubles not because I am cnvinced of the plan.
 

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
And changing my vote to 1 Aiv, only because breacking Wenzel could give us troubles not because I am cnvinced of the plan.
What do you think need to be changed?

The goal is the same as with Ai - to talk to him and learn things that way - though there is an added goal of doing something about Letta.

If you have an idea of how to free her, please suggest it. That's the best I could come up with. I don't know how likely it is to work, as it partly depends on what Wenzel knows.

I am never convinced of my plans myself, so suggestions on how to improve them are always welcome. :)

I am fine with just talking to him, provided that we have a backup plan for failure, as I don't want to let him go until at least some of our goals are completed.
 
Last edited:

Grimgravy

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Sep 12, 2013
Messages
3,469
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
I'm not sold on any on the options for Wenzel. Letting the Sovereigns deal with him looks the most entertaining.
 

Kz3r0

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2008
Messages
27,013
My position was clear, use mental spells combined with interrogation without breacking him, if that fails resort to intimidation.
The only real problem are his two brothers and his father, if we don't want to piss them off we can doi almost nothing.
About Letta the best option would be to detain Wenzel somewhere then storm his compound, I don't think his family will care for a bunch of dead ruffians.
 

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
My position was clear, use mental spells combined with interrogation without breacking him, if that fails resort to intimidation.
That is pretty much my position as well. The problem is that mind spells do not do much if you do not get forceful. They can read surface reactions and thoughts, but not much more.

So you can get a feeling of whether he lies or tells the truth, but only if he talks about something himself, and if he does not suspect you in trying to get into his head.

The plan starts as Ai, and relies on spells to check for his sincerity and how well does he buy our act.

I do not try to talk with him from a position of force, though. He thinks we can't force him, and if we try to prove him that we can, it might create problems for us. So I tackle the subject from another angle.
About Letta the best option would be to detain Wenzel somewhere then storm his compound, I don't think his family will care for a bunch of dead ruffians.
I don't think my plan excludes this option if it does not work. I do not plan to allow Wenzel to leave the premises of the Palace without ensuring her fate one way or the other.

Hell, I was the one who called him to the Palace for that exact purpose, to isolate him from his gang.

I just thought that we might attempt to outsmart him and free Letta without resorting to violence that always carries some risk for the hostages.
 

Kz3r0

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2008
Messages
27,013
My position was clear, use mental spells combined with interrogation without breacking him, if that fails resort to intimidation.
That is pretty much my position as well. The problem is that mind spells do not do much if you do not get forceful. They can read surface reactions and thoughts, but not much more.

So you can get a feeling of whether he lies or tells the truth, but only if he talks about something himself, and if he does not suspect you in trying to get into his head.

The plan starts as Ai, and relies on spells to check for his sincerity and how well does he buy our act.

I do not try to talk with him from a position of force, though. He thinks we can't force him, and if we try to prove him that we can, it might create problems for us. So I tackle the subject from another angle.
About Letta the best option would be to detain Wenzel somewhere then storm his compound, I don't think his family will care for a bunch of dead ruffians.
I don't think my plan excludes this option if it does not work. I do not plan to allow Wenzel to leave the premises of the Palace without ensuring her fate one way or the other.

Hell, I was the one who called him to the Palace for that exact purpose, to isolate him from his gang.

I just thought that we might attempt to outsmart him and free Letta without resorting to violence that always carries some risk for the hostages.
In this case we can try to bluff, detain Wenzel, march with your forces to his compound, wave under their nose the papers with the royal seal and tell them to release the hostages immediately if they want to avoid to go on trial with their boss that is currently under arrest, or something like that, I don't think that they are privy to palace' politics, the only thing they know is that Wenzel has been summoned by the king.
 

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
That might be complicated. See, I asked the same question before I came up with the plan:
Nevill said:
If Wenzel fails to return to the Weazels' hideout and goes missing, say, for a day (or for a longer period of time), why would that make freeing Letta more difficult?

If we or the King's enforcers show up at their compound with an order to transport Letta and the rest of her crew to the Palace (and we can make Wenzel sign such an order as well - I suppose every prince has a signet of some sort as a proof of their royal lineage, just like Jori did), why would they refuse such an order? If we look at a situation through their eyes, their patron was summoned to the Palace, presumably due to some extremely important and urgent business (because the father and son don't really talk much anymore, and the former usually does everything in his power to ignore the latter - it would take something unusual to make Albrecht turn to his son for anything.). Is it too unfathomable to think that Wenzel would not show up in person to claim his prisoners due to the urgency of the request? Are Weazels in a position to defy both the King and the Prince by refusing such an order?

This is the answer I've got:
Fangshi said:
I guess that would depend on what his standing orders are/were and who is in charge over at the compound. I am afraid I can not tell you more than that. This may just be Derry's paranoia acting up or it might be a legitimate concern, no way to know for sure without taking action.
I thought that summoning and detaining Wenzel would solve our problems, but apparently it might not. That made me try to think of something else.

We can always try force, but why not try trickery first?
 

Kz3r0

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2008
Messages
27,013
We can always try force, but why not try trickery first?
Because trickery is very likely to fail if we don't know what kind of orders Wenzel has gave, and if it fails expose our weackness, someone backed by the king or acting on his orders doesn't try to be sneaky.
 

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Kz3r0 said:
Because trickery is very likely to fail if we don't know what kind of orders Wenzel has gave
That is why expressing interest in his company and how they run things there is a part of the plan, at least in its initial stage.
- Speaking to Wenzel about his company and their worth as an organization might clue us in on how things are run in there. We might even get names of people in charge.
- It would be wonderful if we can get him to write (or sign) a letter, or an order, or some kind of document to his gang, if only to see how they communicate between themselves.

Kz3r0 said:
and if it fails expose our weackness, someone backed by the king or acting on his orders doesn't try to be sneacky.
That might be a concern, but do we really have that weakness?

Is there something stopping us from leveling the compound?

The problem here is that the threat of violence might not be effective, not that we can't back that threat.
 

Kz3r0

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2008
Messages
27,013
The problem here is that the threat of violence might not be effective, not that we can't back that threat.
Why?
What gives Wenzel's minions such confidence in trying to resist emissaries of the crown?
Wenzel is protected by being a royal prince but them?
And even if they are privy to palace intrigue Albrecht has effectively granted us the right to execute royal princes here and there, the problem for us obviously is how to justify such action, but is in our power to do if needed nonetheless.
 

Nevill

Arcane
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Messages
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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Don't ask me. I asked the question, I got the answer. I do not know why the answer is what it is. Maybe they don't give a fuck. Maybe Rand is in charge. Maybe Wenzel is serving the Watcher. Maybe Wenzel is the Watcher. I have no idea.

I have a question for you, though. If they don't give us Letta, what is stopping us from executing your scenario?
 

Kz3r0

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
27,013
I have a question for you, though. If they don't give us Letta, what is stopping us from executing your scenario?
Nothing, except that they will do preparation in advance and probably will be more inclined to resist seeing how we shied away from a direct approach initially.
 

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
But your option implies they are afraid of being executed for defying the King's will.

Why would they suddenly lose their fear if our attempt fails?

Would we be in a less advantageous position to carry out our threat (let's leave aside the question if it is actually doable for now)?

I don't know. I can try it your way, I guess. I am no more confident in my plan than I am in yours.
 

Kz3r0

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2008
Messages
27,013
But your option implies they are afraid of being executed for defying the King's will.

Why would they suddenly lose their fear if our attempt fails?

Would we be in a less advantageous position to carry out our threat (let's leave aside the question if it is actually doable for now)?

I don't know. I can try it your way, I guess. I am no more confident in my plan than I am in yours.
Let's keep the vote as it is, if the plan fails we'll see what to do.
 

Baltika9

Arcane
Joined
Jun 27, 2012
Messages
9,611
I'm satisfied with how most of the vote is going, except I'm voting against the twenty archers.
 
Last edited:

Fangshi

Arcane
Joined
Jan 9, 2014
Messages
1,997
Taking into account the new votes the archers drop off the list as they fall below half the votes which solves that tie.

However Aiv and Aii are now tied with three votes each, when that tie has been resolved and you have decided what you want to do with Wenzel I will close the vote.

The update should be out within twenty four hours of the vote closing.
 

Fangshi

Arcane
Joined
Jan 9, 2014
Messages
1,997
Baltika9 said:
Fangshi, what is Albrecht's opinion of Letta? Does he value her more than his son?

That is a difficult question to ask of any father. He would prefer that neither of them suffers lasting harm but in this case Wenzel is clearly at fault. If one of them has to suffer the King would prefer it is Wenzel. Wenzel's brothers however do not even know about Letta.

archaen said:
With no archers Ill vote 9.D 2

Alright, that bring the mortars to half and adds them to the list of purchases.
 

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