Wall Storming #78

 The Season is Upon us, The Shamblers have started warming up, the Kids with fire in their bellies want to partake in the battle, so sad as it is, we must give them a chance. 

Open the Tunnels, Let them throw their lives away, so we might live on.

Blood Rayne

[For those catching up, this is the blog of the events of 3 gaming sessions at the Convention AVCON 2023, Set in the BloodRayne Campaign, ongoing for now 11 years.]

The Grand Ceremony Ended, the Young Hopefuls took up their staffs and blades, donned their armors, and started down the corridor towards the final gates. 

Fear, and Yet Excitement, it was their turn to prove themselves, Fight back the hordes of Undead, Claim the Treasures of the Past, Return as Heroes, or Not return at all, and relieve the burden upon their families.

The Youth always seek out faster means, the returned ones from the past had better lives, more wealth to begin, young men returning had their pick of girlfriends, young ladies, sought after by the highest lords both asked to join the adventurers guilds.

The Traeger Brothers

The First Group to Venture out, Three Strapping Lads, The Traeger Brothers, not by blood but by friendship. Exited one of the newly built tunnels, and finding themselves in a back alley, entered the very first door they saw. It creaked in the mild breeze down this alley, so they opened it to discover a small back room to what appeared to be a bar. Old empty barrels stood here. A second door, more secure, proved to needed some force to open, and by doing so alerted 3 residents to rise from their slumber. 

But Standard residents they were not, Scantily clad ladies of the night, dressed in flimsy apparel, they were both horrifying and mildly intriguing to the male eye, unperturbed and or possibly disgusted in themselves, The Leader lept the bar, smashed down the first zombie and plunged his staff through the face. The creature seemed to stop dead, glancing aside, the other two were somehow trapped between tables, unable to navigate between. Walking back to the bar a 2nd door presented itself, clutching the door in hand, he accidentally tore it from the hinges, and so threw it behind, atop the first zombie, which shuddered back to life.

The 2nd brother quickly incapacitated it, hamstringing its feet and removing its hands. The Third brother roared at the excitement, bursting through the door, and screaming his name!

Ignoring the rest the first two entered this room, where they encountered a slimly red liquid pool, covering the floor of this depressed back room, stone floor and lower half of the floor, The 2nd brother crossed the room to a barrel which didn't seem to have been affected by decay, strange, His Brother pulled the barrel from the wall, and inspected the space, a crack in the wall, caused sunlight to break into the room, it fizzled and retreated, awakening and beginning to form a creature.

Quickly The 2nd brother threw the half barrel over the beast as it formed, the first discovered a Trapdoor and opened it, revealing more blood beast. Instead of closing it again, He backed away into the main room once again, and now spotting the other two zombies draw out his weapon, and promptly stepped upon a rotted part of the floor, he fell partway, legs scratched by the old wood, into the ooze, which quickly took over his body.

His Brother, Leroy, instead of asking, just grabbed him by the waist and attempted to haul him out, but his brothers eyes had glazed over, his skin turned white by the creature, he now grabbed his blade and plunged it into his neck. killing him, but now also opening a wound to allow the creature to crawl from his eyes and mouth out, down his arm, and into Leroy.

Leroy was a fighter, from a young age, he liked to call out his name and run into enemies, slamming them into the ground, so as the life left him, leroy attempted to run into the sunlight, sadly his brother was in the way, and the creature had begun to take hold of his mind. He ran at his brother, smashed him through the wall and shards of broken wood stabbed into his shoulders and thighs. The blow was too much, his ribs crushed he called out to his brother, but too late, the creatre had left that hust and now entered his own mind.

The Brothers were no more, sadly now the last zombie and the blood creatures are free to exit the Tavern at this location, endangering any group to venture this way again. 

Befreinding, with the new Charisma rules

 A new advantage to the Charisma (verbal combat) Rules is befriending animals.

Befriending and Animals

So, We start with the same 'Trust' score between two parties, In this case since an Animal is instinctual you start with distrust (unless the animal is already domesticated) and violent/afraid. (fight or flight response)

The Player performs actions that would appear to be friendly, but since they are different species, would either require animal handling, knowledge of that animal type, and/or knowledge of perfumes & scents of that animal, to provide enough bonuses to have any impact.

The Player performs a Charm vs Distrust roll, (attack vs defence) and the pass by ratio might have a + modifier to the effect roll. (just like STR / DEX or skill rolls can affect the pass by, CHA / WIS / LKS and or skills can affect this roll) to 'build trust' in the animal.

Any fumbles or fails, will result on the creature making that fight/flight roll. If the character defends themself, trust will be often lost as the creatures attack was likely a 'telling off' for the transgression, rather than an actual attack. 

If Trust ever reaches Zero, the creature cannot be befriended for game purposes, Dragging out prolonged trust/distrust scenarios between a player and a creature will likely bog down the game, and the rest of the players will be unhappy to continue.

Standard ways to improve the Charm roll, might be, offer appropriate food, or for semi-intelligent creatures, offer shiny or items with the right kind of smell, such as a leather strap worn by its mother, 

As of now, the levels are:

Enemy->Hated->Disliked->Neutral->liked->Friend->Brother

and

Complete Distrust->Distrust->wary->Neutral->general->trust->absolute trust.

Either side of Neutral (0) are levelled skills in terms of how much 'trust xp' is needed. 

i.e. to get from Neutral to Liked, you need a score CHA (+ LKS bonus) + liked of 24. 

to get from Liked to Friend, you need a lvl 2 liked score of 24. 

Trust starts not at Charisma, but at your own trustworthiness score. If you score at a 7, then you will start trusting others at a 7. 

In the FULL Rules version, Trust and Friendship also have 'high' and 'low' moment variants, So the modifiers will change based on past behaviors, this is more for Solo play rules, but can still be useful for introverted players who wish to play charismatic characters.